2. Master Of Reality (1971)

Master Of Reality is the album that birthed the entire doom and stoner genres, from the marijuana loving ode “Sweet Leaf” to the warm, earthy tone and analog production that influenced bands like Saint Vitus, Electric Wizard, Cathedral, The Gates Of Slumber, Orchid, and countless others.

Master Of Reality is an interesting title choice considering that the album is all about abandoning reality. The sound is a womb or a cocoon; it muffles the outside world so you can find comfort elsewhere, whether through drugs, delusion, or even faith.

Ward and Butler dialed it back on Master and worked in tandem with Iommi in service of the riff. It’s not that their playing is minimized; it’s that they formed a bulwark. There’s also not as much playfulness or improvisation on Master as there was on the debut or Paranoid; rather, you have Sabbath working together for a single, devastating effect.

Master Of Reality is an album that helps you get lost, the record spinning in the background as a teenager tentatively smokes their first joint. “Sweet Leaf” — a title taken from a description of a cigarette named Sweet Aftons — is about the wonder of marijuana and accessing your third eye; “After Forever” urges listeners to find hope in God (“God is the only way to love”) and “Into The Void” is about leaving a desolate Earth behind for new worlds. Perhaps the madness of Vietnam led to the rampant escapism on Master, and the suffocating feel. Master Of Reality has been called a Christian album and that might be an exaggeration. You could say that Master Of Reality is a dystopian album, one where Sabbath looks at the world we’re trapped in and pines for something better.

Most critics savaged Master Of Reality, including Lester Bangs:

The thick, plodding, almost arrhythmic steel wool curtains of sound the group is celebrated and reviled for only appear in their classical state of excruciating slowness on two tracks, “Sweet Leaf” and “Lord of This World,” and both break into driving jams that are well worth the wait. Which itself is no problem once you stop thinking about how bored you are and just let it filter down your innards like a good bottle of Romilar. Rock ‘n’ roll has always been noise, and Black Sabbath have boiled that noise to its resinous essence. Did you expect bones to be anything else but rigid?

Bangs was wrong. The message — and the music — have lasted. Master Of Reality is, in some ways, strangely hopeful. Mountain Goats frontman John Darnielle wrote a novel as part of the 33 1/3 series about an institutionalized teen that finds some hope and connection in Master Of Reality. That an entire novel could be written in tribute to an album speaks to how Master Of Reality created a universe in the minds and hearts of listeners.