10 Hard Rock Albums Critics Were Completely Wrong About
2. Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath's debut record marks a pivotal moment in the world of hard rock. With the perfect combination of blues fury and demonic howling, the album set the precedent for heaviness in rock and marked the beginning of metal music as we know it today. Such an album would be cause for celebration, but this initial offering was met with outright contempt by some of the top music critics.
Coming from Lester Bangs once again, the legendary Rolling Stone reviewer couldn't bring himself to say anything except the music being passable, with the rest of it feeling like a rerun of something like Cream. In one of the most apocryphal instances of the review, Bangs dares to call the vocals from Ozzy Osbourne sparse at best, with Tony Iommi bringing criticized for being a Clapton wannabe.
Legend has it that one negative review gave the new genre its name, with one reviewer likening their sound to "a load of heavy metal being dropped." In retrospect though, this was the moment where heavy metal began taking shape as a serious force in the music world. No matter what was said back then, these scraggly kids from Birmingham were about to become legends of the hard rock world.