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BLACK SABBATH: BEYOND METAL (A JAZZ ODYSSEY)

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EVER HEARD BLACK SABBATH SOUND LIKE THIS?

On July 6th, the day after Black Sabbath’s Back to the Beginning sign-off at Villa Park, Stuart Maconie broadcast a Sabbath special Freakzone on BBC Radio 6 Music.

It was an inspired slab of radio – a wild selection of Black Sabbath covers, bands inspired by Sabbath and, of course, Sabbath originals. But it was the covers that really made it work because none of them were rock or metal. Not a single one.

Instead there was fictional jazz (eh?), medieval folk, Ethiopian brassy scuzz, Scandi-fied indie pop, contemporary classical and plenty more … countless left turns in a fascinating trip that hints at just how far and wide Black Sabbath reached.

The programme is no longer available on BBC Sounds but, because it’s too good not to rave about, here are a few words on some of the tracks that blew my tiny mind, followed by the tracklist for your fullest explorations.

RIP Ozzy Osbourne. Long live the Summer of Sabbath.

Far beyond metal

What, no guitar? Better get used to it with French/Ethiopian hybrid uKanDanZ because they lead into War Pigs with a screaming sax blast and it RIPS. After that, they lock down a tough keys-bass-drums groove punctured with brassy bursts.

Soreng Santi throws out a very loose take on Iron Man. It’s a track that’s always lumbered in the best possible way but here the sticky fuzziness of the riff stumbles and wavers and just about stays upright. In contrast, the drums dance with clarity and full command of spacial awareness. If you watched White Lotus, this track appeared in an episode somewhere. Apparently.

Hearing some radical reworks of Paranoid makes you realise that the chugging riff captures the paranoia of the title – it’s a bit nervy, edgy, restless. Take that signature element away and the song can be transformed, as Black Bossa Sabbath Nova show with a gentle, swinging shuffle that glides so smoothly it barely touches ground. Beautiful vocal too.

Sticking with Paranoid, Hellsongs do a similarly non-monolithic breakdown. Like Susanna and the Magic Orchestra’s minimalist, heartbreaking version of Love Will Tear Us Apart, Hellsongs strip a robust original down to its barest essence and redress it lightly – here with whispered gusts and string-backed Americana. Hellsongs Paranoid is roomy and calm, the very opposite of Sabbath’s anxious riffing. And while we’re on a Paranoid reimagined trip, check Type O Negative’s version for a transcendent goth metal overhaul.

If the idea of Jazz Sabbath (listed below) excites more than the lighter-touch music delivers then Iron Man by The Bad Plus is the place to get a proper jazz-does-Sabbath experience. THIS is jazz Sabbath. Piano chords take the place of Iommi’s riff, the tempo is slowed a fraction and the inventive combined muso talent makes more notes, more melodies and more dimensions without ever losing the heavy essence of the original.

Keeping it jazz, Brad Meldhau‘s Sabbath is not a cover but a tribute. Doom piano and shit-hot drumwork conspire to fashion a downer earworm from Sweet Leaf’s cloud. Bulletproof and nicely weighty.

At the risk of turning this into a jazz odyssey, the final highlight – for now – is more jazz. From a metal legend. War Pigs by The Alex Skolnick Trio. Swingy as fuck. Do not expect Testament-al thrash riffage. Do expect clean, warm tones, sublime phrasing, blistering jazz runs and a drum masterclass … how much musicality? Unreal.

As promised, below is the full Freakzone tracklist minus the Black Sabbath originals. Sleep and Electric Wizard are familiar enough but all the covers here are, to me, a new adventure and every single track is worth checking. Credit to Stuart Maconie for putting it together – radio at its best.

Let the Black Sabbath story continue.

Freakzone: Black Sabbath Special

Cindy und Bert – Der Hund Von Baskerville. Ultra catchy German pop-psyche Paranoid via Haight Ashbury

Les Baxter – Main Title (from the film, Black Sabbath)

uKanDanZ – War Pigs. See above

Jazz Sabbath – Electric Funeral. Soft shuffle and brushes from Adam Wakeman’s invented concept. If the nightcap fits… drink it. Late-night bar vibes

Rondellus – Rotae Confusions. Wheels of Confusion, sung in Latin, haunting and medieval

Soreng Santi – Kuen Kuen Lueng Lueng. See above

Vitamin String Quartet – Into the Void. Strings, innit?

Cardigans – Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Light and dreamy retro drift-pop with incredibly cool funk drums. Genteel detachment you can almost dance to.

Black Bossa Sabbath Nova – Paranoid, see above

Sleep – Holy Mountain. No description required

Apocalyptica – Spiral Architect. Full bodied orchestral instrumental

Hellsongs – Paranoid, see above

Brad Meldhau – Sabbath, ditto

The Bad Plus – Iron Man, ditto ditto

Electric Wizard – Funeralopolis. See Sleep above

Free Nelson Mandoomjazz – Black Sabbath. Melancholy sax, horror scream squall sax, max-tension dynamics – this song was destined to be doomjazzed

Meatdripper – Homegrown. Blackened stoner with Pigsx7 slam riffage and questionable vox, you decide

Alex Skolnick Trio – War Pigs, see above and listen and weep

Black Sabbath Vol 4
Back to the Beginning, back to the font: Vol 4

HALLOWEEN: PARANOID AND NEGATIVE

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TYPE O NEGATIVE SLOW DOWN A SABBATH CLASSIC

Of all the seminal heavyweight scare-alls you could choose for a Halloween soundtrack, you’d be hard pushed to choose chillier than Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath from Black Sabbath – not just the slowest, most-ominous anti-groove put to tape at that point in heavy rock’s short history, but a track that’s got the imagery to match: the Hammer-horror dread that Ozzy conjures in your shitting-it mind and, of course, the spectral Presence on the album’s cover.

But despite all that, we’re not picking Black Sabbath the track for a Halloween playlist, not this year. 2014 belongs to PARANOID.

I’ve never much liked it.

Easily the least essential of Iommi and co’s anthems, it stands supremely un-tall against Sabba-manna like Wheels of Confusion, Fairies Wear Boots, Hole in the Sky and the like. No-one, surely no-one, would pick Paranoid’s pop-metal bounce ahead of any of those.

But what if it was slower – like, a LOT slower?

Or blacker – like, none-more-Tap blacker?

Or deader – like, graveyard undeader?

Cue Type O Negative.

If ever a band embodied the Halloween aesthetic and staked it with wry gallows’ humour, Type O are it. Halloween in Heaven, Black No.1, Bloody Kisses and All Hallows Eve are literal enough links but really, any track of theirs from Bloody Kisses onwards that’s not thrash-fast is pretty much game – Suspended in Dusk, Everyone I Love is Dead, Haunted, The Profit of Doom, take your pick. You get the gist.

But it’s the realm of the cover version that pulls everything together today. The band have got form in this area, lending the Negative touch to Neil Young, the Beatles, Hendrix and – most perversely/brilliantly – to 70s harmony-pop smash Summer Breeze, dragging the Seals and Crofts/Isley Brothers classic from sunshine floater to a slow-low-lower hot sticky trudge.

And so it is with Paranoid, stuck on the end of the faux-live pisstake Origin of the Feces.

Hypnosis-slow, lavishly arranged and knowingly soaked in trademark vampiric goth, Brooklyn’s least celebrated give Sabbath’s 3-minute chugger a makeover so total and so Type O that they absolutely own it: seven luxuriant minutes of pure Para-satisfaction, making it feel like the first time all over again.

Sneak a bit of Iron Man’s downward bender of a riff into the mid-section and you’ve not just got a top Sabbath tribute and a ‘ween classic for the rest of time.

You’ve got one of the best metal cover versions EVER.

*recorded in 1994, it’s 20 years cold!!!! Dig it out from post-94 issues of Origin of the Feces.

**for a few more soundtracks from the dark side, have a quick look at last year’s Halloween list