I haven't listened to a lot of Black Sabbath in my life. I suppose I should correct that. They are considered one of the progenitors of heavy metal along with Led Zeppelin, my favorite band. We'll see how they compare, and I'll try to be as objective as possible.
There's nothing wrong with the sound of the opening track. Most rock albums from the early 70s sound essentially perfect- the drums and bass are full and powerful, the guitar is distorted and crunchy. The song itself is a bit of a hodge-podge of ideas so I have a hard time settling on whether I like it or not. "Tommorow's Dream" is much more settled on a tighter riff structure and still carries a terrific heavy sound.
"Changes" is a cheesy piano/string ballad that really does not fit with the first 2 songs. My brain is having trouble making sense of why this song is here. I don't have a ton of history with Black Sabbath so maybe they have a bunch of songs like this that I just haven't heard. But this is definitely not what I was expecting from one of the fathers of heavy metal. It doesn't work, it doesn't belong.
To be fair, Led Zeppelin's fourth album did start with 2 bone-crushing rockers before "The Battle Of Evermore", a soft mandolin folk tune. But "Evermore" works much better there than "Changes" does here for a few reasons:
1) Zeppelin had done plenty of acoustic folk-rock tracks before "Evermore", whereas "Changes" seems to be completely different from everything I've ever heard Black Sabbath do. If I hear more examples of this sort of music from Sabbath in the future maybe I'll change my mind about "Changes."
2) "Evermore" has a slow fade-in and build up which helps transition from the abrupt ending of "Rock And Roll," the song that preceded it. "Changes" has a cold opening and doesn't really build up, so there's no real chance to get used to the sudden change.
3) "Evermore" is an excellent song in it's own right and would probably work no matter where it was placed. "Changes" is a cheesy power-ballad almost to the point of being silly but just winds up being corny.
But those are just my opinions on the matter.
"Supernaut" is a great hair-metal track. The breathy distortion of the guitars keeps it from sounding ultra-cheesy like standard hair-metal, but the riff is just so tailor-made for head banging. It's a really fun song and I'm most appreciative that it's not as dark as I expect Black Sabbath to be. "Snowblind" on the other hand is a downer. The riff and melody wander around a lot, the drummer smashes his cymbols way too much, and the violin overdubs at the end feel needlessly tacked on.
I feel like I've heard Black Sabbath use the riffs from "Cornucopia" before, and I haven't even heard that much music from this group. "Laguna Sunrise" is another absurd outlier track, even more so than "Changes." I never thought I'd hear a classical guitar and string instrumental on a Black Sabbath album, but whatever... I guess if that's how they want to fill things out more power to them. It is a lovely little song, if a bit trite and a minute too long.
Vol. 4 has become iconic in that it solidified Black Sabbath's heavy metal sound and showed the band reaching beyond their routes in new directions. I can't really agree. I like Black Sabbath's signature crunchy down-tuned sound and they sure can rock hard. But they made no real effort to blend the softer songs in with the rest of the album. What I wind up hearing is 8 hard rockers that sound a bit too similar and 2 complete outliers that almost sound like a completely different band. Maybe if "Changes" and "Laguna Sunrise" weren't on Vol. 4 I'd like it better. But even then the rest is all pretty similar chunky-riff rock. I normally don't complain about that, but it was a bit boring. 2 stars.
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