Album of the day (#4662): Paranoid by Black Sabbath

[albummaster]

Today's album of the day

Paranoid by Black Sabbath (View album | Buy this album)

Year: 1970.
Country:
Overall rank: 56
Average rating: 86/100 (from 1998 votes).

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Tracks:
1. War Pigs
2. Paranoid
3. Planet Caravan
4. Iron Man
5. Electric Funeral
6. Hand Of Doom
7. Rat Salad
8. Fairies Wear Boots

About album of the day: The BestEverAlbums.com album of the day is the album appearing most prominently in member charts in the previous 24 hours. If an album, or artist, has previously been selected within a x day period, the next highest album is picked instead (and so on) to ensure a bit of variety. A full history of album of the day can be viewed here.

[AAL2014]

It’s amazing how fucking well Paranoid holds up to this day. It’s been on my main chart basically since the beginning but I gave it a listen in full for the first time in a couple of years just the other day and I had a great time with it. Great headphones record.

For me, in the context of the album, the ubiquitous hits like Iron Man and the title track work even better. This album should get a lot of credit for how anthemic the instrumental portions are on top of the unforgettable lyrical passages. Zero misses on the track list, great jams, a lot of fun.

Very happy with its placement firmly in the website’s top 100.
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Attention all planets of the solar federation: We have assumed control.

[Fischman]

[Kaduken]

Easily my #1 favorite album. I had known Iron Man, War Pigs, and Paranoid from growing up, but I never sat down and listened to the album in full until college. That Black Sabbath, this quintessential "metal" band, could play downtempo, psych-y jams like Planet Caravan had never occurred to me. For me, this album is the pinnacle of Iommi's "Riff God" status, with Ozzy's energy and Bill Ward and Geezer Butler's rhythm section deftly moving from driving intensity to ruminative languishing. Lyrically, it's hard not to get absorbed in the dark fantasy and sci-fi parables of Fairies Wear Boots and Iron Man, or moved by the confessional intensity of Paranoid, or the powerful social-conscious imagery of War Pigs. The instrumental tracks are also never to be slept on. This album somehow always seems to compress time, it's 41 minutes feeling to me always like half that duration as I lose myself in its gothic world. I still get something new with subsequent listens. 100/100

[CharlieBarley]

As far as albums go, one of the greats