10 Songs You Need To Add To Your Halloween 2020 Playlist
3. Children of the Grave - Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath were a shock to the musical system when they first arrived on the hard rock scene. While bands like Led Zeppelin may have been pioneering what would become known as heavy metal, Sabbath struck the perfect balance between heavy and menacing, with songs that dealt with horrifying material and riffs that could scare you to death. Their first few releases may have been unsettling, but Children of the Grave showed that they had only just begun to scare us.
Tuning the guitar down to unheard of levels at the time, Tony Iommi's riffs take on a different character on this tune, where he feels like the commander of a legion of demons. Set to a shuffle feel, the main riff feels like an army of frenzied children coming to take over the Earth, as Ozzy Osbourne instructs the crowds to execute anything that stands in their way.
Given the macabre tone of the song, the lyrics are actually pretty pertinent, talking about the hippie ideal of the '60s falling and giving way to death and destruction in its path. The sounds of flower power may have been fine at the time, but once Sabbath took the reigns, the rock world was about to go to some dark places.