Fifty years ago today, February 13, 1970 (a Friday, naturally), heavy metal was definitively born with the release of Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut album. From its fearsome tolling bell and tritone riff of the opening title-track, to the powerful grooves of N.I.B. and the bluesy heaviness of Behind The Wall Of Sleep, it immediately marked Sabbath out as different from contemporaries in Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Uriah Heep, and drew a line in the sand that would kick off nearly five decades of heaviness to follow. In a word, Sabbath were darker and more sinister than anyone else. The bell that heralded the album’s start, the wind, the rain, Tony Iommi’s evil riff – nobody was quite as in touch with the dark side as Sabbath. “We used to rehearse across the road from a movie thea...
