In honor of the upcoming festivities. . .
"Black Sabbath" was written, in part, from an alleged experience bass player Terry "Geezer" Butler had. Also, it was written to set out a template for future songs by the band, which took its name from a Vincent Price movie. Butler was a fan of horror films, and wanted to separate out the music the band was playing, originally a bluesy kind of thing (at the time, the band was still known as Earth, which created booking issues, cause there was a British hippy-dippy pop band by the same name with a minor UK hit). Coming from the industrial working class, their experiences were not all happy-smiley- let's all drop acid and make love not war. While they would expand their musical horizons over the decade, this song still works pretty well (a warning - Ozzy's intro is NSFW)
The first round of death metal bands to emerge in Europe - Mercyful Fate and Venom being among the better ones - were over the top in terms of their dress and general presentation. Metallica drew a lot of early inspiration from Venom, toured with them for quite a while, but didn't copy their studs-for-Satan personas. They aren't to be taken seriously, really, beyond being a good band that managed to create a lot of press by being outrageous. This song, "Welcome to Hell", is one of their better ones.
Rob Zombie has turned more and more to film direction, with his recasting of the Halloween franchise not just different from the original, but quite good in and for themselves. His fascination with schlocky horror kitsch is evident in his music as well. I think "Living Dead Girl" is one of his better songs; a few years ago, I offered it as part of a soundtrack for a community theater production of "Dracula". That and "Bela Lugosi's Dead", of course. . .
