Black Sabbath is directly responsible for some of the hardest and heaviest sounds ever created by man or beast. One fateful day in Birmingham, seventeen-year-old sheet metal worker Tony Iommi lost a couple fingertips in a bloody industrial accident, and the world gained heavy metal as a result. Well, Iommi claims it was an accident, anyway. Seems more like a deal with the devil, if you ask me.

Anyway, despite their well-earned reputation as the grandfathers of everything hard, heavy, and unholy in general and the architects of blood-freezing doom metal in particular, early Sabbath wasn’t always heavy, all the time. They mellowed the fuck out on occasion. Brit DJ Robert E. Lee proves the case with the incredible Balearic Sabbath, a 35-minute excursion into Black Sabbath’s most placid moments, a slow n’ easy Sunday morning remix full of free-flowing flutes, jazzy coffeehouse guitar noodles and softly banged bongos. From “Planet Caravan” to “Laguna Sunrise” to “Solitude” and back, this droopy-eyed foray into Sabbath’s gentler side is the perfect soundtrack to your next lost weekend.

Doom and despair have never sounded so groovy.
 

How Tony Iommi lost a finger and created heavy metal

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘New’ footage of Black Sabbath on German TV, 1970