The band who gave Metallica their “purpose in life”
The subjectivity of music means that we can sit and debate who the most influential band of all time is for hours on end, but the impact of groups like Black Sabbath will always be constant.
Never has a band been more of a reflection of their environment in the same way that Black Sabbath were. As the 1960s rolled on by, music was becoming increasingly more fun. You had The Beatles, who were writing love songs, experimenting with different sounds and putting on great shows. These four paved the way for a broad spectrum of music that plenty of bands then started taking advantage of.
It was a good time to be a music lover. The charts were filled with pretty innovative ideas, and it led to people being able to truly enjoy and engage with what was on offer. In fact, Black Sabbath’s very own Ozzy Osbourne was hugely inspired by The Beatles because of what they did for music.
“When I heard the Beatles. I knew what I wanted to do,” said Osbourne when discussing the band. “My son says to me, Dad, I like the Beatles, but why do you go so crazy? The only way I can describe it, is like this, ‘Imagine you go to bed today and the world is black and white and then you wake up, and everything’s in colour. That’s what it was like!’ That’s the profound effect it had on me.”
While The Beatles allowed for some light in a dark time, there was still no escaping the reality of everyday life for a lot of people, and as a result, music went one of two ways. It went down the path of escapism, where artists wrote about a better life and injected their sound with an energy reflective of said better life. Or, you had people embrace realism and create a sound which was the perfect reflection of what they went through on a daily basis. Black Sabbath… well, they sort of did a bit of both.
Some of their songs didn’t talk about the real world. Tracks like ‘Black Sabbath’ and ‘The Wizard’ were both pretty fictional in their narrative; however, the sound was stacked in realism, and everything that inspired Sabbath’s heavy approach to music was a byproduct of their upbringing. Then you had other tracks like ‘War Pigs’ and ‘Paranoid’ which kept that realistic sound but also had down-to-earth narratives attached.
The result was a style of music that nobody had come across before. It was rock, sure, but presented in a completely unique way. It was heavier, it felt representative of the smoke coming out of chimneys from factory floors, it ripped the grey from the British sky and bundled it into an effects pedal, it was terrifying, it was different, it was the precursor to all things heavy metal, and most importantly, it was god damn brilliant.
Black Sabbath proved that people could make a career in music by embracing a sound which was heavier and slightly more unpalatable for sensitive souls. Many heard their debut and turned it off. Then you had bands like Metallica, who stumbled upon this brand new form of music and knew they didn’t intend on making anything else.
“Sabbath was the band that put heavy in my head,” said James Hetfield, “That first Sabbath album I would sneak out of my brother’s record collection and play on the forbidden record player. I wasn’t supposed to touch any of that stuff, but I did, and the first Sabbath album got in my head. That initial song, ‘Black Sabbath’, was the one when you’d put your headphones on and sit in the dark and get scared to death. Then the Devil’s riff comes in, and it got you!”
There are so many metal bands that wouldn’t have a platform were it not for Black Sabbath, and a large portion of them played with Black Sabbath during the band’s final show in 2025. Here, Metallica spoke of the influence of Black Sabbath beautifully.
“Let’s celebrate the band Black Sabbath,” said Hetfield. “Because without Sabbath, there would be no Metallica. Thank you boys for giving us a purpose in life. Thank you Black Sabbath.”
