Chapter 1: The Birth of Metal
Chapter 2: Sweet Leaf and Snowblind
Chapter 3: Prog Sabbath
Chapter 4: Jazz Sabbath and Ozzy’s Departure
Chapter 5: Enter Ronnie James Dio
Chapter 6: Stonehenge and the Revolving Door of Musicians
Chapter 7: A Tony Martin Triptych
Chapter 8: Ronnie Returns
Chapter 9: Tony Martin Returns
Chapter 10: Reunions with Ozzy and The End
Nolan Stolz is a composer, scholar, and drummer with a background in classical, jazz, and rock music. He is assistant professor and coordinator of music at University of South Carolina Upstate, where he teaches composition, theory, popular music studies, and drum set. Visit his website at www.nolanstolz.com and follow him on Twitter @nolanstolz.
In this informative academic look at the music of Black Sabbath,
composer and music professor Stolz undertakes a song-by-song
analysis of many of the band’s recordings, from its 1970
self-titled debut to its The End tour in 2016. Stolz meticulously
explores what made Sabbath’s music so heavy: the ‘frightening’
sound of the band’s reliance on the tritone (the interval between
two notes long known by classical composers as the ‘devil in
music’), which was heavily used in the blues-influenced music of
early Sabbath. He also explains how the ‘dreadfully slow’ tempos
made many songs feel ‘doomy.’ Stolz expertly shows how, in their
later albums, Sabbath pursued a progressive sound by incorporating
tempo changes, dissonance, and variety of rhythms.... Stolz's
analysis is insightful.... This is a volume for die-hard Sabbath
fans.
*Publishers Weekly*
A fascinating read covering the complete history of the band. The
depth of analysis is astonishing, dealing with every riff and
nuance. This is the definitive work, encompassing the music and a
comprehensive and detailed analysis of the legendary group. Amazing
work!
*Laurence Cottle, former bassist, Black Sabbath*
Nolan Stolz has impressively found a way to add to the current
writings on Black Sabbath, most notably with his detailed
deconstruction of each song. The beauty of this approach lies in
the novice and deep Sabbath fan alike inevitably and without choice
scurrying back to the compositions to follow along with the
author’s professional postmortem.
*Martin Popoff, author of seventy music books*
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