EU Import. Even though most bands around this time stayed in standard tuning for another decade or two, whoops. The shortest album of Black Sabbath's glory years, Master of Reality is also their most sonically influential work. [36] However, the songs are not indexed on the CD using those timings the breaks between songs are correctly placed. This was the first Black Sabbath sleeve on which the lyrics were reproduced on the back of the sleeve. BLACK SABBATH - MASTER OF REALITY ALBUM LYRICS - SongLyrics.com The sixties are gone and the whole album plays like a savage rebuttal to the hippie optimism of Turn! Not only does it begin with a cough but a cough produced by Iommi after hitting a joint, method music making I suppose. This album has just always seemed to me to be such a pure metal record with nothing but the purest form of metal contained with in it's majestic purple and black covered walls . Orchid suffers from the same plight as Embryo, except it is a little more developed. I should probably focus on him for a while. "Master of Reality" is an album that does so much right, but so much wrong too. Not bad, but definitely boring. 'Master of Reality' is a must-listen for all fans of heavy music. Black Sabbath needs no introduction to anyone who has even the most basic understanding of heavy metal. Without getting into specific bands, doom metal is slow and heavy music with crushing riffs. And then theres Solitude, which kind of sucks. His fills are, at times, pretty fast here (check out the middle segment of Sweet Leaf) and the beats are all very well composed and fit the music very very well. Theyve recorded some classic albums from 1970 to 1981 and if it is their best, an album like Sabbath Bloody Sabbath or Mob Rules is not too far behind but Master of Reality defines from each song to song what I think of when their name comes up. Black Sabbath - Master Of Reality :: audiophileusa For me what makes this Black Sabbaths best album is the overall consistency in the quality of the songwriting and musicianship, the excellent atmosphere, and the lack of sustained laughable moments that seem to dot some of their other releases. It was the certified double platinum after having sold more than two million copies worldwide, a first for the band, Master of Reality was the first and only number one album in the US charts until . Plenty of excellent riffs show up here, in particular Children Of The Grave, After Forever, Sweet Leaf, Lord Of This World and Into The Void. Maybe that's why Children of the Sea was written to complement it nine years later. So, Into the Void really is the heaviest song ever (I probably say that about three times a week about different songs, but this is always one of them). This song is all that keeps the album from being perfect. There is still a trace of the downtempo bluesy grime in their songwriting, but it becomes apparent later on that 'Master of Reality' has progressed past what the band was doing the year before. Children Of The Grave - This cut gave birth to all headbanging cuts. Well, and the question is: is Master of Reality a good album? Some early German, US and Canadian pressings had the title incorrectly printed on the record labels as 'Masters Of Reality'. The speed and chugginess of it right after a song like Solitude strengthens the overall heaviness of Master of Reality. Unusual, though perhaps too stoned to be intentional. I hear people call it Sabbath's heaviest record of their career all the time, and for sure when it was released it was, but of all time? The short but witch-y folk interlude of Embryo sounds arbitrary but its the type of bauble that gives Master of Reality its doom metal character. This music is more Sabbathy than ever before, and damn its good. Alas, it has its weak moments, mainly in the fact that Sabbath seem to be on a silly acid trip half the time and can't chain Iommi's amazing riffwork into total SONGS consistently. Master of Reality gives us great, heavy fucking metal riffs that sound great in standard tuning, or any tuning (go look up a 1992 performance of Into The Void with Tony Martin, standard tuning and still Azbantium splitting). Lord of this World is very nice, and After Forever, which is not nearly as Christian as it looks at first glance (it skewers both those who blindly bash, and those who blindly obey), is decent quality as well. He doesn't play around with it much, but the "less is more" approach really works. *cough cough* Upon listening to Master of Reality, it is immediately apparent that this album is a darker, heavier affair than the first 2 Black Sabbath albums. After losing his fingertips in an accident at his workplace, he had to have metal implants where they used to be. The latter song, by contrast, is a very light and melodic number that is comparable to later Sabbath songs such as Neon Knights and Turn up the Night. The riffs are so heavy and so masterfully created that they will always stand the test of time as a masterpiece just like the Mona Lisa or Beethoven's fifth symphony . It is the bookends that are really what's encouraging and also very spectacular. "COME ON NOW!" This album contains some of their most famous Lyrics ranged from the sweet leaf (weed, duh!) Sabbath like most 1960's and 1970's bands were influenced heavily by the blues masters of old and up until Master of Reality this influence was peppered throughout their releases . An exciting crescendo ( la Spiral Architect, N.I.B. Black Sabbath Master Of Reality on Collectors' Choice Music Casting Black Sabbath as a Titanic-style house band on the eve of Armageddon, cranking it as the bomb drops. Here Tony Iommi began to experiment with tuning his guitar down three half-steps to C#, producing a sound that was darker, deeper, and sludgier than anything they'd yet committed to record. Just look at this verse from the song for example: Whoever decided that Master of Reality should begin with the sound of Tony Iommi coughing after taking a big hit with a joint is a genius. The band repeat the attempt to include a quiet song with the inclusion of Solitude, which unfortunately just isn't very good - it's over five minutes long and really needs to trim three of those minutes, it's a poor attempt at a flute-led melodic love ballad which fails to match up to the efforts of other bands working in the same vein (it reminds me a little of a poor attempt to mimic early Jade Warrior), and the lyrics are the sort of love poetry a self-important 13 year old might compose. Iommi's riffs are justnothing special here, and the song just loops on and on to me. I always summarize it as an album that showed an evolution for Iommi and Geezer, but a devolution for Ozzy and Ward. It is regarded by some critics as the foundation of doom metal, stoner rock, and sludge metal. Note that the timing of "Orchid" on revised US pressings is incorrect: it includes the "Step Up" introductory section of "Lord of This World." Absolutely recommended to every metalhead out there. Black Sabbath - Master of Reality - Encyclopaedia Metallum His very definable voice is undefinable in a single word or phrase . Being contrary for the sake of it? Not ones to be boxed into one specific sound, the 4 horsemen of Black Sabbath have succeeded once again in both maintaining the hard edged sound that they are pioneered and not repeated themselves. The lyrics are a little vague, and the main verse riff is a little same-y, but overall this is another great Sabbath classic. to religion ("After Forever") and war and terror ("Children of the Grave"), ("Lord of This World") and ("Into the Void"). So with the aforementioned thick, dark, fuzzy, sludgy riffs doing their work on the albums five heavy tracks, its time to move on to the other electric instrument: the bass guitar! It always makes me feel like they had half an idea for two different songs, but couldn't think of what to do with them, so they just mashed them together. If they knew you believe in God above? They once again managed to craft a new collection of music different from the previous record(s), much like 'Paranoid' was different from 'Black Sabbath'. Ozzy sings it with an ever so dreary demeanor and it follows suit to the feeling that Planet Caravan evoked. It is a foundational. Sadly, Master of Reality is often despised by the majority of the people, who constantly say that Paranoid is the be-all, end-all of Sabbath's catalogue. Master of Reality deserves a place SOMEWHERE in your collection, because apart from the amazing songs on it, the blueprint for metal as we know it lies within its dark and gloomy walls, and it will undoubtedly inform you as to where most of the music you enjoy comes from. Now while this album is arguably one of the heaviest albums of all time, the reason it works so well not just as a metal album, but as a piece of music in general, is that the five ultra heavy tracks are balanced out with three lighter ones that dont change the atmosphere. Master of Reality is an extremely short but very effective album. The contradictory message ("Think for yourself and don't let others dictate your beliefs! 'Embryo' is an eerie violin observation that may have worked well to space out the album's first side were it not so aimless. They are actually heart wrenching. See, I LOVE this song, I love the riffs and the tune and almost everything, but this song takes a lot of shit because it's a rather ham-fisted Christianity endorsement. We take a look at Black Sabbath's masterful third album Master of Reality. Yet another song that is not fit to be sung by anyone else other than Ozzy. Everybody thinks "Black Sabbath", "N.I.B", yeah yeah darkness reigns etc. (Like Dark Fucking Angel, the expletive denotes heaviness and must be used at all times.) The best Ozzy-Sabbath song. This release has gone two times platinum and that might not seem like much considering some very popular bands go platinum in one year and this is two times platinum over the period of over 40. One thing that doesn't really get talked about regarding Black Sabbath, beginning with Master of Reality is just how high Ozzy's vocals would get here. I always did wonder what that would sound like if Tony copied the bass line to make it a proper riff. He actually sings on this song, and he sings well and emotively. This is the worst classic Sabbath song. Yes, its that great. The previous two records amped up a blues influence that made them so heavy but Master of Reality is where an inadvertent incorporation of classic music comes into play when it comes to the mechanics.