Black Sabbath

Supersonic Years: The Seventies Singles Box Set

BMG Singles-hating band’s singles collected on vinyl. Where, say, The Beatles’ 1982 singles box set collected the core of their material in its crucial format, viewing Sabbath’s Ozzy years through their 45s is at best an eccentric footnote to their LP edifice The Ten Year War.

The band’s 1970 debut Evil Woman (Don’t Play Games With Me) is an atypical start, with its breezy pop chorus, and Bill Ward’s jazz brushwork on B-side Wicked World. Its top five followup then provoked a two-year ban on further UK singles. This looks still more perverse when the sleeve notes mention that Paranoid was titled ‘Single’ on its master tape, so blatant was its commercial intent. As Iommi’s riff repeatedly yanks to a ripchord halt and Ozzy’s haunted house vocal despairs, it’s undoubtedly a great single, worth hearing on a 45’s fat grooves, and backed by the contrasting blues strut of The Wizard.

The same could be said for the giant’s footfall of Iron Man, sluggish yet tough, backed with Electric Funeral’s bitterly exultant, still sludgier and doomier atom war nightmare. The inclusion of this US single during the format’s UK purdah, while

Master Of Reality’s US singles are ignored, is, though, typical of this collection’s disjointed nature. International picture sleeves and radio edits offer a questionable ‘rarities’ return.