Album Review: Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

Black Sabbath's third album Master of Reality was released in 1971.  Due to an accident, guitarist Tony Iommi downtuned his guitar, giving the heavier tracks a darker feel than previous albums.  Sweet Leaf opens annoyingly with a looped cough before the driving, deliberate riff kicks in, pushing the song along till it speeds up for the flashy midsection.  It sounds like they had listened to Led Zeppelin II, which must have impressed them.

The driving riffs on this album are quite superb, After Forever and Children of the Grave are relatively brisk, yet still allow Ozzy Osbourne room to sing his doom-laden lyrics.  Many of the tracks have two or three separate parts within the one song, showing a fair degree of musical proficiency which they are not always credited for.

Apart from the very short acoustic interludes Embryo and Orchid, Solitude is a blissed-out slow track in a similar vein to Planet Caravan (from previous album Paranoid) with the merest of percussion, Iommi's gentle, electric strums and the odd bit of flute (it was the early seventies).  But two of the later tracks are the real 'meat' of this album.  Lord Of This World and Into The Void have dark, sludgy riffs which work really well as these two swaggering rockers lumber off into the night, rounding off an album that feels, if anything, a little short.

Album Review: Nine Inch Nails – The Fragile

1999’s The Fragile was Nine Inch Nails’ first album in 5 years, and it’s a sprawling beast of a double album.  Split into Left and Right discs, there’s a LOT to get your teeth into.

There are some great tunes buried under Trent Reznor's many ‘noise’ experiments – with some really big choruses, such as the Bond-evoking Day The World Went Away, the lengthy We’re In This Together and the magnificent brooding of the title track.  There is time for some moody funk with the instrumental La Mer, more fully realized as a proper song later on Into the Void.

There’s tons and tons of moody atmosphere on instrumentals like The Frail and the excellent final track, Ripe [With Decay].  However much of the rest of the album is full of shouty, noisy brooding tracks, and at a running total of over 100 minutes over two discs, it makes the album exhausting to listen to.