Black Sabbath In The Studio For Vol. 4's 50th Anniversary (2022 In Review)

Keavin Wiggins | January 04, 2023

Vol. 4 cover art

Black Sabbath In The Studio For Vol. 4's 50th Anniversary was a top 22 story from November 2022: The 50th anniversary of Black Sabbath's 'Vol. 4' album was celebrated by the syndicated radio show In The Studio With Redbeard: The Stories Behind History's Greatest Rock Bands.

Redbeard had this to say, "By Autumn 1972 the world into which the Birmingham England band Black Sabbath had quickly risen to popularity with their second album, Paranoid, felt increasingly like a dangerous place when Vol. 4 was released. It seemed that time was marked and policy formulated by a seemingly endless stream of violent acts including assassinations, bombings, race riots, the slaughter of college students on campus, and the decade-long Viet Nam war. And all of this violence was set against the pernicious incessant white noise of the nuclear arms race between the U.S. and Soviet Union in a thermonuclear game of 'chicken'. Black Sabbath's sound and subjects, which would be lampooned decades later as cartoonish, were forged as much by these deadly concerns as by Animal House debauchery.

"While music critics were not hesitant to slag off every Black Sabbath release, 1972's Vol 4 included, nevertheless it became the band's fourth consecutive album to sell over a million copies in the U.S. , reaching #13 on Billboard and #8 sales in the UK. Yet many detractors who had watched Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, and Lon Chaney in such classic scary movies as Dracula and Frankenstein, nevertheless felt that Black Sabbath's fantasy deadpan doomsday warnings in such songs as 'Tomorrow's Dream', 'Children of the Grave', 'Snowblind', 'Changes', and 'Supernaut' were somehow a threat. Black Sabbath co-founder and original lead singer Ozzy Osbourne joins me In the Studio for what is widely regarded as the last classic album from the Godfathers of Heavy Metal." Stream the episode here.