Paranoid

Black Sabbath’s second album for Vertigo distills heavy metal to its essentials: Ozzy Osbourne’s wailing vocals, Tony Iommi’s downtuned riffs, and a suffocating sense of dread. The title track alone—a paranoid sprint through feedback and doom—became the template for generations of metal bands. Recorded in mere weeks, Paranoid captures the Birmingham quartet at their most focused and lethal, transforming hard rock into something genuinely menacing.