1. Black Sabbath - The band started on a high and made a fantastic album by anyone's standards. The blues elements are still in place, but with an added variety of riffs, imaginative melodies and curious lyrics. Warning, although originaly by Aynsley Dunbar's Retaliation, is one of the band's most memorable pieces.
2. Paranoid - More refined than the first album, with no weak tracks. Fairies Wear Boots is one of their best tracks, with an absurd lyric, intricate vocal, complex guitar, an air of overall menace and maximum heaviness.
3. Master of Reality - Marked by the distinctive drumming of Bill Ward.
4. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath - Contains two of their best tracks in the title track and Killing Yourself to Live, but the rest is forgettable.
5. Sabotage - During a period of financial difficulties, the band produced an album that made their would-be successors sound like pop. Symptom of the Universe is amazing.
6. Heaven and Hell - Ronnie James Dio, fresh from Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, gave Sabbath a new lease of life and Iommi's guitar solos were cleaner than ever.
7. Born Agan - Not as incrongruous as the critics would have you believe, with some outstanding work from the Iommi/Gillan partnership.
8. Seventh Star - Glenn Hughes shouts and screams from the bottom of his socks, but a partnership with Iommi that should have been earth-shattering is overwhelmed by an eighties production.
9. Tyr - Came as a tonic during a lean time for heavy rock. The Zeppelin influences show, but Tony Martin proved himself a great singer on some epic pieces.
10. The Devil You Know - Contractually a Heaven & Hell album, but the return of Ronnie James Dio revitalised the power of Iommi and Geezer. Sadly, it was short-lived with the sudden illness and passing of Dio.
Bubbling under - Vol 4 combines the excellent Snowblind and Wheels of Confusion with some drug addled nonsense, like FX. Dio's The Mob Rules, Headless Cross with Tony Martin and the Ray Gillen live album are all worth a mention.
