There are barely more genres a single album is said to have originated than Black Sabbath's debut. I'm not going to list them all, but rock music definitely hasn't been the same since. Other bands might have experimented with heaviness in their sound as well, but the sheer amount of rawness and doom the first couple of minutes on this album evoke - for a big part thanks to Ozzy's haunted madman voice that brilliantly complements the instrumental part - were something new and literally unheard of. The band later said that their inspiration for their name and sound were horror films and well, it shows!
Beside all its heaviness - and there is plenty - Black Sabbath eponymous first album album also shows that they didn't fell from the sky as the band they are known as, but evolved into it. There are still some strong bluesy, even distinctively jazzy elements in their playing that were pretty quickly phased out in later songs. Especially in the second, more improvised half with Sleeping Village and The Warning have the feel of a heavy-rock-meets-jazz jam really, which actually works really well.
Another quite distinctive attribute this album has is its raw, unpolished sound, which has almost live-qualities. If we can believe guitarist Toni Iommi, and I do, the album has been recorded on a single day, with very few overdubs. Quite the opposite of what they would do just in a couple years time, where the studio sessions dragged on for weeks, even months.
Like many debut albums, Black Sabbath isn't as perfect and polished as their later work, but shows a band that has opened the gate to a new world. In the coming years they, and after them many other bands would step through this gate and continue upon what this album started.
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