10 Best Opening Tracks In Metal
2. Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath
When the blues-based rock outfit Earth newly rechristened themselves as Black Sabbath, they were fed up with playing the 12-bar blues numbers they had gotten used to playing in clubs. As they started to come up with more original material, guitarist Tony Iommi came up with a riff that would make heavy metal history.
Borrowing from the classical music of Holst, Iommi used the tritone, or devil's interval, to make an eerie tonal clash that made the band's ears perk up. With drummer Bill Ward providing atmosphere with his tom toms, bassist Geezer Butler started writing lyrics based on a ghostly experience he had after reading books on the Occult.
Once the lyrics were fed through Ozzy Osbourne's vocal chords, the song became a unique concoction of hard rock mixed with truly horrific imagery. When the band finally played the song live, the audience went mental and demanded the song on repeat.
Once the band went into the studio, they decided to add a church bell and rainfall to the start to prepare the listener for the first demonic sounding hard rock track. With the groundbreaking sound and undeniable sonic presence, there was really no other place the song could have gone except for the start of the record.