10 Perfect Debut Albums In Rock Music History

There have been many fan debates as to when heavy metal fully came into existence. While there are many people point to certain songs like The Beatles’ Helter Skelter or the Kinks’ You Really Got Me as the progenitors of the genre, rock was already giving us heavier bands around the turn of the ‘60s, with Led Zeppelin dominating the hard rock of the blues scene and a young shock rocker named Alice Cooper making waves in the States. If there is one album that fully gave birth to the genre though, you’d be a fool not to pick Black Sabbath’s first record.

Which is actually ironic considering that Sabbath themselves were never thinking along those lines. When the band were going to record the album, they were originally thinking of themselves as just a hard rock band, mining the same type of blues that was happening around the time like Zeppelin and Cream. Once Tony Iommi started to toy with the construct of the blues on songs like the title track and NIB though, the band were onto something slightly more sinister, with riffs that were enough to send shivers up your spine the minute you heard them.

Even though the band may have just had a penchant for horrific subject matter, you can feel the seeds of metal starting on every single track on here, from the beginnings of stoner rock on The Wizard to the band using the dreaded tritone at will on the title track, which puts everything on edge without even needing any lyrics behind it. Sabbath may have just been looking to play some scary music to get their rocks off, but the rest of the world were ready for something heavier, and had found just the band to copy.