10 Greatest British Hard Rock Bands

Before Black Sabbath, heavy metal was just a rough idea. While bands like the Rolling Stones and the Beatles had songs where they would get nasty, there were no bands taking that visceral style to the very extreme. Once these lads from Birmingham caught fire though, the entire language of rock had changed.

First coming to fruition as a blues band, things started to go in a different direction once Tony Iommi began coming up with his own guitar riffs. Still rooted in the blues tradition, Iommi's musical pieces had the potential to make your hairs stand on end, with the perfect blend of aggression and nastiness. Knowing the power behind the riffs, the band followed his lead by making some of the most ominous tracks imaginable, complete with lyrics about the occult, war, and the damning effects of drug use.

This type of music could have easily come off as preachy, but the way that Iommi's guitar intermingled with Ozzy Osbourne's vocals made the music feel like the rapture coming into your room. Even without Osbourne, the band's incarnation with Ronnie James Dio showed them transitioning into even darker territory with the croon of a banshee. Black Sabbath may not have sought out to be the first heavy metal band, but without them to pave the way, we wouldn't be talking about the genre today.