Electric Funeral—Black Sabbath
#365Songs: May 12
Ah, the 1970’s.
What a time to be alive!
Such a complex decade. How to capture its essence in a single song?
To approach this challenge, I began by thinking about genres, and which ones were in their ascendancies during that magically delicious era.
There was, of course, disco. Funkytown. Disco Inferno. Night Fever. Hot Stuff. Get Down Tonight.
And on the other side of the dial, punk. The Sex Pistols. The Ramones. The Buzzcocks. The Dead Boys. Iggy and the Stooges. The New York Dolls.
Somewhere in between, in the milder channels, there was soft rock and arena rock. Everything from America and Bread to Boston and Styx.
Other genres included smooth jazz and jazz fusion. Heartland rock and art rock. Krautrock and industrial. Even rap, which emerged at the very end of the decade.
In full transparency, I was sorely tempted by disco.
But in the end, I went in a rather different direction. I flew across the pond to old blighty and landed smack dab in the middle of Birmingham, England, birthplace of British Heavy Metal.
If that seems like an odd choice, check yourself.
When it comes to album sales, hard rock and heavy metal are hard to argue against.
AC/DC, 75 million
Metallica, 63 million
Guns n’ Roses, 44 million
Nirvana, 28 million
The list goes on.
And none of it would have been possible if it hadn’t been for a shabby little foursome that got together in the midlands of England in 1968 and called themselves Black Sabbath.
Technically, the band has released 19 studio albums in its nearly-sixty-year career. But while the Dio era is legit in my book, what we’re really talking about when we talk about influence and impact are the five albums that comprise heavy metal’s Pentateuch. Which are, of course, the first five Black Sabbath albums.
Black Sabbath
Paranoid
Master of Reality
Vol. 4
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
If I had to choose, I would say that Paranoid gets my vote as the top of the tops. It’s as close to heavy metal album perfection as is likely possible.
As to settling on a single song, I’m going a bit against the grain on this one, by selecting “Electric Funeral.” Other than the instrumental “Rat Salad,” it’s the only other song from the album that doesn’t have its own Wikipedia entry. That should tell you something.
And what it should tell you is that everybody but me is stupid.
Ok, not really.
But really, this song deserves WAY more respect.
Yes, it’s lyrically terrifying:
Reflex in the sky
Warn you you’re gonna die
Storm coming, you better hide
From the atomic tide
Flashes in the sky
Turns houses into sties
Turns people into clay
Radiation minds decay
Robot minds of robot slaves
Lead them to atomic graves
Plastic flowers, melting sun
Fading moon falls upon
Dying world of radiation
Victims of man’s frustration
Burning globe of obscene fire
Like electric funeral pyre
Buildings crashing down
To Earth’s cracking ground
Rivers turn to wood
Ice melt into blood
Earth lies in deathbed
Clouds cry for the dead
Terrifying rain
Is a burning pain
Electric funeral
Electric funeral
Electric funeral
Electric funeral
And so in the sky
Shines the electric eye
Supernatural king
Takes Earth under his wing
Heaven’s golden chorus sings
Hell’s angels flap their wings
Evil souls fall to Hell
Ever trapped in burning cells
And yes, it’s doom-sludge slow. Nearly 5 minutes long, with much of it delivered at a grinding pace of just over 60 BPM.
But listen to that opening, wah wah-laden riff!
Listen, and everything Alice in Chains and Soundgarden ever did will suddenly seem a lot less innovative.
Like most of Black Sabbath’s early catalog, it’s the riffs that drive pretty much everything — including, most notably, Ozzy Osbourne’s vocals. As with obvious classics such as “Iron Man,” Ozzy pretty much just sings along with everything Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler give him to work with.
Bill Ward is the secret hero. No matter how sludge-y the riffs, Ward was always epic — funky, jazzy, polyrhythmic, and always, always, heavy as hell.
So that’s the choice I’ve given you.
Sure, you could go get all sexy-happy feeling with some KC & the Sunshine Band.
But why do that, when you can contemplate the end of the world?
~
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