10 Perfect Albums That Changed Rock History

In the early days of the '70s, there seemed to be only two types of rock and roll music. Either you were on the poppier side of the spectrum like what acts like the Beatles were doing, or you were getting into the nastier side of rock like Jimi Hendrix and Cream were doing in the clubs of England. Somewhere in the cold streets of Birmingham though, Tony Iommi was cooking up something slightly more sinister than what Eric Clapton was up to.

The moment that Black Sabbath's debut album dropped, fans of the more intense side of rock and roll had gotten the answer to their prayers. Here was a band that had the same bluesy foundation of a band like the Rolling Stones or Cream, only fed through distortion and riffs that sounded like they were being conjured up from the bowels of Hell.

While only being a handful of tracks long, every one of these songs became the blueprint for what the more nasty side of rock and roll was to become. In just a few years time, an entire generation of kids who grew up studying that record had come to prominence with a completely new sound that seemed designed to be a lot more scary that the usual hard rock that graced the radio. The rock world might not have been ready for it at the time, but heavy metal had just been born.