“The Wizard” is about a wizard who uses his magic to encourage people he encounters. In a 2005 interview with Metal Sludge, Black Sabbath bassist and lyricist Geezer Butler said the song’s lyrics were influenced by the wizard Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings.^[4]

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article The Wizard (Black Sabbath song), which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

“Symptom of the Universe” was composed largely by guitarist Tony Iommi, with lyrics by Geezer Butler. Its closing passage, very unlike the rest of the song, evolved from an in-studio jam, created spontaneously in a single day.^[1]

Live versions can be heard on the albums Past Lives, Cross Purposes Live and Live… Gathered in Their Masses, as well as the Never Say Die! concert video.^[2] It is also the opening track on Ozzy Osbourne‘s 1982 live album, Speak of the Devil.

“Symptom of the Universe” was ranked the 19th best Black Sabbath song by Rock – Das Gesamtwerk der größten Rock-Acts im Check.^[3]

The main riff to “Symptom of the Universe” is considered to be a structural and sonic predecessor to thrash metal,^[4] a heavy metal subgenre which emerged in the early 1980s. Tony Iommi said of the song “It starts with an acoustic bit. Then it goes into the up-tempo stuff to give it that dynamic, and it does have a lot of changes to it, including the jam at the end.”^[5]

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Symptom Of The Universe, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

The song begins with a tape loop of guitarist Tony Iommi coughing from a joint he was smoking with bandmate Ozzy Osbourne.^[5] The song’s subject is cannabis, which the band was using frequently at that time.^[6] The title of the song was taken from a packet of Irish cigarettes that read “It’s the sweet leaf”.

“Sweet Leaf”, and the Master of Reality album as a whole, arguably represents the earliest example of the music that would influence the emergence of stoner rock in California in the early 1990s.^[7] A compilation album, also titled Sweet Leaf, comprising covers of Black Sabbath songs by stoner rock bands, was released by Deadline Music in 2015.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Sweet Leaf, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Master of Reality, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Its main riff has been cited as “the riff that saved Black Sabbath”^[1] because Tony Iommi, who wrote most of the band’s music, had been suffering from writer’s block.^[2][3] They resorted to drastic measures (including renting out the supposedly haunted Clearwell Castle to live in) to inspire him.^[2][3]

The song has been singled out for praise by hard rock and heavy metal guitar players, with Slash from Guns N’ Roses stating to Guitar World in 2008, “The outro to ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’ is the heaviest shit I have ever heard in my life. To this day, I haven’t heard anything as heavy that has as much soul.” Brent Hinds of Mastodon agrees, telling Nick Bowcott in 2008, “The ‘dreams turn to nightmares, Heaven turns to Hell’ riff at the end of that song is unbeatable.”

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (song), which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

“Paranoid” was the first Black Sabbath single release, coming six months after their self-titled debut was released. Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler (from Guitar World magazine, March 2004):

A lot of the Paranoid album was written around the time of our first album, Black Sabbath. We recorded the whole thing in about 2 or 3 days, live in the studio. The song “Paranoid” was written as an afterthought. We basically needed a 3 minute filler for the album, and Tony came up with the riff. I quickly did the lyrics, and Ozzy was reading them as he was singing.^[5]

The song is an E pentatonic and only uses a “root/5th” diad as chords. The guitar solo is a dry signal on the left channel, which is patched through a ring modulator and routed to the right channel; this effect was used again on the song 1978 “Johnny Blade”.

According to extant lyric sheets, “Paranoid” was at one time titled “The Paranoid.”^[6]

“Paranoid” eventually became the name of the album, and somewhat unusually, the word paranoid is never mentioned in the lyrics. Originally the band had wanted to call the album War Pigs after the song of the same name, but the record company persuaded them to use “Paranoid” instead because it was less offensive.^[7]

“Paranoid” drew controversy for apparently encouraging suicide, much like the song “Suicide Solution“. Particularly, the lyric “I tell you to enjoy life” was misheard as “I tell you to end your life”.^[8]

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Paranoid (Black Sabbath song), which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

The song’s title has long been a source of speculation, with some fans over the years interpreting the title as meaning “Nativity in Black”. In the early 1990s, Geezer Butler claimed that the title was a reference to drummer Bill Ward‘s beard at that time, which his bandmates felt looked like a pen nib.^[3] According to Butler, “Originally (the title) was “Nib”, which was Bill’s beard. When I wrote N.I.B., I couldn’t think of a title for the song, so I just called it Nib, after Bill’s beard. To make it more intriguing I put punctuation marks in there to make it N.I.B. By the time it got to America, they translated it to ‘Nativity in Black’.”

Though “Nativity in Black” is a disputed title, it was later used for a pair of Black Sabbath tribute albums released in 1994 and 2000 respectively.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article N.I.B., which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Master of Reality, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

The song has been featured on a number of greatest hits and live albums by Black Sabbath, as well as by the band’s lead vocalist Ozzy Osbourne during his solo career.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Children Of  The Grave, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.