VOLUME FOUR

With this album I found that Sabbath started incorporating more melody and emotiveness into their music - something that would show more fully in the next release. The slow ballad "Changes" was a totally different route for the band. I also found that the band was entering new progressive territory with tracks such as "Wheels of Confusion" and "Snowblind" - the actual precurser to prog metal as we know it today? Volume 4 is, to my mind, one of Sabbath's very best releases and it has driven the music road with me for miles and miles over the years. I can't say that it falls within my top 10 all time albums as there are so many albums that I love but it has to be very close - it is an album that I have never been and never will be without. "FX" is purely a breathing space on the album and it leads so wonderfully into "Supernaut". Once more Ozzie's use of his voice has improved on this album and, to me, it peaks on the next two releases. Like the previous album's "Sweat Leaf" was about weed, "Snowblind" is about coke - the bands relationship with narcotic substances is left in no doubt at all however they seem a little angry and anti in some of their tracks relating to the topic of drug abuse. Sure the band members were spaced out at this stage of their game but it in no way had started to impact negatively on the music - in fact I believe it enhanced their vision for what they were wanting to write and achieve musically at that time stage in their journey. I will never advocate the use of narcotics but having said that I do believe that for a time it enhances creativity until the day when it gets on top of a person and starts to warp and destroy things - with narcotics that day will come and later on in the band members' lives it did. Volume 4 for me is a four and a half star album with a half star removed purely because of the monster of a release that would follow which claims the full 5 stars easily for me. This album is classic Sabbath in full flight, not as heavy as "Master of Reality" but damn close and incorporating more of a prog feel along with a little more melody.