Black Sabbath – Paranoid (1970) [Japanese Limited SHM-SACD 2010 # UIGY-9034] {SACD ISO + FLAC 24bit/88,2kHz}

Reissue features the high-fidelity SHM-SACD format (fully compatible with standard SACD player, but it does not play on standard CD players) and the latest DSD mastering in 2010 based on Japanese original analogue master tapes. DSD Transferred by Hitoshi Takiguchi.

Paranoid was not only Black Sabbath’s most popular record (it was a number one smash in the U.K., and “Paranoid” and “Iron Man” both scraped the U.S. charts despite virtually nonexistent radio play), it also stands as one of the greatest and most influential heavy metal albums of all time. Paranoid refined Black Sabbath’s signature sound — crushingly loud, minor-key dirges loosely based on heavy blues-rock — and applied it to a newly consistent set of songs with utterly memorable riffs, most of which now rank as all-time metal classics. Where the extended, multi-sectioned songs on the debut sometimes felt like aimless jams, their counterparts on Paranoid have been given focus and direction, lending an epic drama to now-standards like “War Pigs” and “Iron Man” (which sports one of the most immediately identifiable riffs in metal history). The subject matter is unrelentingly, obsessively dark, covering both supernatural/sci-fi horrors and the real-life traumas of death, war, nuclear annihilation, mental illness, drug hallucinations, and narcotic abuse. Yet Sabbath makes it totally convincing, thanks to the crawling, muddled bleakness and bad-trip depression evoked so frighteningly well by their music. Even the qualities that made critics deplore the album (and the group) for years increase the overall effect — the technical simplicity of Ozzy Osbourne’s vocals and Tony Iommi’s lead guitar vocabulary; the spots when the lyrics sink into melodrama or awkwardness; the lack of subtlety and the infrequent dynamic contrast. Everything adds up to more than the sum of its parts, as though the anxieties behind the music simply demanded that the band achieve catharsis by steamrolling everything in its path, including its own limitations. Monolithic and primally powerful, Paranoid defined the sound and style of heavy metal more than any other record in rock history.

Tracklist:
01 – War Pigs
02 – Paranoid
03 – Planet Caravan
04 – Iron Man
05 – Electric Funeral
06 – Hand Of Doom
07 – Rat Salad
08 – Fairies Wear Boots

DSD transferred from Japanese original analogue master tapes by Hitoshi Takiguchi (Universal Mastering Studios).

SACD ISO

BlackSabbath1970Paran0idJapan2010SHMSACDIS0.part1.rar
BlackSabbath1970Paran0idJapan2010SHMSACDIS0.part2.rar

FLAC 24bit/88,2kHz

BlackSabbath1970Paran0idJapan2010FLAC2488.2.rar