The Music Around You: A Tribute to Black Sabbath
For the past couple of weekends I have mostly been covering local bands I’ve seen around the Inland Empire music scene. While I support these artists and their stride to spread their art, I want to take a moment to pay homage to a big influence in the music scene I grew up with. This past weekend Ozzfest came San Bernardino Calif. and headlining was none other than Black Sabbath with the majority of its original members. The line-up consisted of Ozzy Osbourne (vocals), Toni Iommi (guitarist) and Geezer Butler (Bass) and their new drummer Tommy Clufetos, who all did a phenomenal job and reminded me what it was that attracted me to them when I was younger.
Black Sabbath formed in the fading era of the flower power’s 1960’s psychedelic scene, which was a perfect transition to something new and much needed. They evolved from playing heavy blues rock to pretty much inventing a new genre of music which would eventually deem them the godfathers of heavy metal. Their goal as a band was to bring the chilling sensations of horror films into their music and they did so with the track “Black Sabbath” which incorporated the tri-tone, a musical interval that contains three adjacent whole tones into their music. This was also referred to as “The Devil’s Interval” by the band and its followers who said the band used it in an eerie style.
This concept of scaring people was an inspiration to many bands such as Alice Cooper who took it up a notch with theatrics and from then on it evolved in the metal scene. Death and Black metal would probably not even exist if it was not for them! With much nostalgia, I watched the band play a majority of their hits and made peace with the idea that this would be their last tour, and by the end, you bet I was singing along.
