PARANOID

After excellent ( and very successful) debut album Black Sabbath continued to work in similar key.

Second album is similar to debut, but is much more better structurised, cleaned from jazzy drumming and rhythm breaks. Generally, using similar ideas and musical raw material, much more "rock" album was recorded.

Sound is still quite acoustic ( not that muddy pulsation as in some later albums), you can perfectly hear all instruments' playing. Ozzy control his voice better, and all music sounds more mature.

Two songs are absolute classics - "Paranoid" and "Iron Man ", but in fact all the album is equally strong, no fillers.

I prefer their debut as much more inventive and different album , but believe that "Paranoid" should be placed in their album's Top-5 for sure. And I think it had a big influence in many heavy metal bands formation for decades after it was released.

Let say 4,75.