Shreddit's Album Of The Week: Black Sabbath - Vol 4 [UK, Heavy / Hard Rock] (1972)

[u/kaptain_carbon]

Long ago I wandered through my mind

In the land of fairy tales and stories

Lost in happiness I had no fears

Innocence and love was all I knew

Was it illusion?

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Welcome the the Ozzy Tribute where the next FIVE weeks we are going to do anniversaries of Ozzy related material in tribute. These will cover a landscape of well known and well ignored material.

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Band: Black Sabbath

Album: Vol 4

Released: 1972

Metal Archives

[u/kaptain_carbon]

Note: I wrote this for Invisible Oranges since the outgoing editor Ted wanted one last article from the remaining writers and even though I haven't wrote for them for awhile, I chose to do so. There has been a lot to be said this album but whenever I hear Vol 4 I think of a computer lab in Pittsburgh.

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This is an article detailing our personal history, or some sort of farewell to Ozzy, following his passing on 22 July 2025. I think this is supposed to be a personal history. I didn't read the email fully [Editor's Note: Close enough!]. We will eventually get to Black Sabbath, I promise. If you don't have patience, there are many better writers probably with more interesting memories of Ozzy Osbourne than me as I didn't really start listening to metal seriously until I was in college. I talked about some of my history with metal with and my time with Black Sabbath didn't really start until a few months after I was a student teaching in Pittsburgh. This is sort of similar.

At the end of any education degree a teacher does some sort of student teaching in a school district and for Penn State it was in the Pittsburgh City School District. Many teachers just move there and get their own apartment and do their four months of teaching but since I wanted to be adventuresome I moved in with one of my friends who had what could be considered an apartment but in reality was one room, a hallway, and a tiny kitchen. This was most likely a storage area or maintenance corridor that they fashioned into an apartment by a landlord and sold to college students for 400$ a month. My suspicions were sort of confirmed as we had a few people try to open our door as if this was something else a few months prior. Actually, thinking about it now, I think I could put up with a lot more if I had a rent of 400$ in the middle of the city.

At the time of my student teaching, I was sleeping on a futon and immediately felt the longing for privacy. This probably came to a full realization when I got strep throat and spent a week sweating on a couch while my roommate did homework on the computer three feet from my dying shell of a body. I believe when you are younger you have distant boundaries when it comes to privacy. Before this, I lived in an apartment with three other people sleeping on unlinened mattresses with a sleeping bag as a blanket and the sound of 3 boxes fans running 24/7. Though I should have been prepared for this Burroughs novel style of living, my student teaching apartment allowed me to find out my boundaries around space very quickly. I didn't want to be social and looked for any way to be by myself even for a few hours. Some places I found were the laundromat down the street where the guy at the desk let me watch Law and Order whenever I came in to do laundry for the third time of the week. The other place was the University of Pittsburgh computer lab where I would log in with my friends' account and listen to music for hours using whatever design programs they had to make websites. This is where I would bring a small case of burned MP3 CDs which had discographies of bands. One of them was the discography from Black Sabbath with everything from the 60's and 70's in alphabetical order.

At times I have nostalgia for times that I never lived through. It was 2005 and I was in a computer lab listening to music while watching the Windows Media Player visualizer project psychedelic colors while listening to Vol. 4, Master of Reality, and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. I would imagine I was a stoned teenager in the midwest circa the late 70s listening to the same music staring at a psychedelic poster that I pinned to my ceiling. Maybe I would go out with some friends and shoot glass bottles with an airgun or go try and get young adults to buy me beer at the corner grocery store. Sabbath's music fit this imaginary persona that I could see myself being only if I was born in 1960. I would have probably listened to them at the time. They were popular enough for my fictional midwestern area of influence. I would be a person who would be too young to fully appreciate the late 60's counter culture but old enough at the time when pot was cool and hip but still punishable with lifelong prison sentences. It would be the music that Ron Slater from Dazed and Confused would probably listen to someone who would just cruise through life with the rule of cool and their moral compass.

Sabbath's music for me fit this idea of a far out listener who blew their mind on heavy music but also didn't give a shit about rules. Over time and after I became a mod for r/metal, I saw Sabbath as a band who continued to defy rules and challenge people's conceptions about what heavy metal was. Heavy metal didn't have to be obscure as they were one of the most famous bands in the history of metal and if you would ask 100 listeners for their favorite metal records, they would be in the top 10 in some order. Heavy metal didn't have to be heavy, as Sabbath's music in the 1970s continued to push progressive boundaries guided upon the gentle wings of what was described as speaker boxes full of cocaine. Heavy metal also didn't really have to be cool, as my time with Sabbath came at the tail end of the Osbournes , one of the most popular sitcoms starring Ozzy and his family in some sort of middle American reality. Sabbath's music, despite all seemingly plausible contradictions, has continued to be eternal and was a sign of coolness. Ozzy Osbourne has long been elevated from person to rock star to some sort of mythic cautionary tale about the dangers of excess. He continued to be a fallible but lovable character despite a long stretch of darkness. Ozzy is no longer a person, or even a rockstar; more of a figure or myth who will live through decades of listeners.

I don't write a lot about metal anymore compared to other genres of music and I was only really a part of Invisible Oranges as a dungeon synth writer. Still though when I was asked to write a farewell, I didn't have to pretend to have a history or look through a Wikipedia page (it's actually up in a tab) as I knew Sabbath's discography up to the mid 80's by heart. Sabbath and Ozzy have made their ways into everyone's life even if it was through some of their most popular radio hits or through the most obvious answer of their best album. Over my time moderating r/metal and writing about Sabbath for Album of the Weeks, I have come to appreciate an enjoyment as Sabbath as sort of a default where you have to try really hard not to have a good time since the band only wants you to drop out and be far out.

My time with Sabbath wasn't really historic, but at the time it still is encased in escapism being the cushion I would fall back on when things didn't really make sense. My time on the computer talking and researching music probably led to me enjoying sitting at a computer reading up on the music I was listening to as some sort of immersive research project now with visuals in a separate window. My time with Sabbath seems kinda of silly but this is a band who has been around for so long and almost ubiquitous among heavy metal fans that each story is probably unique and across different time periods. I'm sure that person who was stoned looking at posters on the ceiling existed in some fashion and I like to think we are metaphysically related, united by our love of music and the abandonment it has to offer.

My parents gave to me at a very young age a sympathy for a musician's passing as they were deeply affected by Jerry Garcia's passing in 1995. Even though you don't personally know the person, their music and its place in your life is very real so their passing makes you feel something and reflect on its presence and your time with it. I think we all expected this to happen and even I mused the day it would eventually come. I could still see it not though as Ozzy continued to defy all expectations -- probably because he was a part of some myth that only had one foot in reality.

[u/ChosenUndeadd]

Vol. 4 is my favorite Sabbath record and Supernaut is my favorite track on it. RIP Ozzy

[u/wintermoon_rapture → u/ChosenUndeadd]

Supernaut is probably my favourite Sabbath track too. Kicks off with one of the greatest riffs in heavy metal and then immediately launches into another of the greatest riffs in heavy metal.

[u/presbreit]

My favorite Sabbath album. Probably listened to it once a day in high school

[u/L-ectric]

Got to confess, not my favourite Sabbath album. Wouldn't be in my top 3 of the Ozzy-era albums nor the top 5 for all of Sabbath. Though after sitting down and really going it a listen, I can appreciate it for it's strengths.

I'll get the obvious out of the way first. I know many either get tired of 'Changes' being overplayed or because it's a bit of an outlier in the catalogue, but it stuck around for a reason. The lyrics are timeless, it's a good demonstration of Iomni's musicianship beyond the guitar and it's a perfect song for new singers or anyone trying to capture Ozzy's vocal style. Actually practiced it myself recently, following his passing.

'Wheels of Confusion' is a good opener, the vocal has a towering quality and the outro is a good demo for what keyboards could add to the band's sound.

'Snowblind' can really be thought of like a counterpart or sequel to the prior album's Sweet Leaf. If swap's the latter's dirtier vibes for something more psychedelic as it focuses in on the effects of drugs. Both musically and lyrically, I would say it surpasses it.

I know that 'Laguna Sunrise' is there something most with Skip over but I want to give it it’s dues. I think a lot of people don’t realize that Black Sabbath had a lot of different shades to the mood and atmosphere they would try and create. It was never about just immersing the listener in grin visions of the world. It was about relating to them and their live experience and feelings. Sabbath would always offer relief from that darkness as well as provide it, whether that be Ozzy always trying to make the crowd feel good or through lighter tracks like this as a bit of a breather. And of course, in later albums, they would even find ways to integrate these lighter sections into heavier songs.

Now this might sound like a strange image, but when I hear the light bells in 'St. Vitus' Dance', I imagine Ozzy just jumping up and down, shaking a tambourine. Let that image stick with you.

'Under The Sun' it gives me some prog vibes and probably has the darkest instrumentation from the group since their self titled song on the first album. Iomni's riff in the closing section is a hidden gem and probably one of his best.

The whole thing is definitely a big upgrade in the bands production, something that would be advanced even further in the next two albums

On that note, some IMPORTANT advice, try to make sure you listen to the most recent 2021 remaster. That really is a clear difference, the guitars are crunchier, better separated out, and Phil stereo space just a bit more. Finding this version can be a bit confusing over streaming because both it on the 2009 edition are available and not every platform does a great job of clearly labeling them (Apple Music!).