10 Hard Rock Bands Who Made 5 Great Albums In A Row

Call them rock, hard rock, metal or whatever, Black Sabbath basically invented heavy music and brought it to us all. Formed out of Birmingham in the late 1960s, the four piece of Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Bill Ward and Geezer Butler became one of music’s most iconic bands. For all their antics, musical wizardry and invention, Black Sabbath laid down the foundations for what would become stoner rock, grunge, doom metal and sludge, but ultimately they were the first ever metal band.

Similarly to AC/DC, Sabbath have a tight run of six great albums in a row right at the start of their career. 1970s Black Sabbath began it all with their blues inspired album that takes things darker than most had ever dared to, following it up with the monolithic Paranoid released only a few months later. Described as the definitive metal album, Paranoid has it all.

Next came a string of classics in Master of Reality (1971), Vol. 4 (1972), Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973) and Sabotage (1975) in a run that would see them experiment, never try to specifically write a hit, go creepier than before and bludgeon their audience with heaviness.

Black Sabbath are the forefathers of metal, and that opening run of albums are *chefs kiss*.