FIRST FOUR Led Zeppelin albums vs. FIRST FOUR Black Sabbath albums

Zep! But it will be close.

Its a close one but I feel Sabbath's first 4 have been far more influential on the course of music than Zeppelin's. Although Sabbath lack the subtle nuances of Zeppelin and failed miserably in their attempt to diversify from their 'true' sound, they created a sound and style which has pretty much defined the genre of metal ever since and influenced people as diverse as Jello Biafra and the Cardigans. Zeppelin excel in their musical abilities but are still generally viewed as a 'muso's' band, in equal parts loved for their genius and loathed for their pretentiousness.

RONG!

So predictable - justify.

And learn to spell you're a big boy now.

Are you voting based on their legacy and influence, or simply how much you like each set of records? Because it sounds like the former. I know you well, and I don't believe for a second that you would choose BS's first 4 albums over LZ's first 4, as much as you love both sets of albums.

For what its worth, I find Black Sabbath sluggish and one-dimensional, and I've never seen anything in them that's made me want to investigate further. Led Zeppelin, other the other hand, hooked me within the first 5 seconds of hearing them, and they've kept me hooked ever since.

nate = rite. diab= rong.

I chose based on legacy. The poll doesn't specify what the criterion is for voting so I went for who's first 4 albums have been the most influential.

Horses for courses as usual, but for the record, I probably listen to Sabbath more than Zeppelin as one dimensional and sluggish as they may be ;¬)

speakin' of horses:

"I refuse to lose, I refuse to bow down"

And I refuse to choose!

Sensible decision, wish I'd done the same now.

Led Zep. Even though their best album was the fifth one.

Black Sabbath also had a pretty good start though. "Changes" is one of the best songs ever made by a "hard rock" band.

It's been irreparably damaged by that horrid version Ozzy did with Kelly though. I just can't bring myself to listen to it anymore.

they created a sound and style which has pretty much defined the genre of metal ever since and influenced people as diverse as Jello Biafra and the Cardigans

see, millions of people would just say "Who?"

They did that song "Too Drunk to Love, Fool!"

New project, he's bored of recording with the Melvins.

Absolutely no contest for me, Sabbath easily.

Sabbath in one of the biggest blowouts in ILM history.

Or improve on the ASCII LZ4 symbols.

I like using "# & @ %"

Sabbath in one of the biggest blowouts in ILM history.

-- Bill Magill, Thursday, 17 January 2008 14:56 (1 hour ago) Link

hmmm....man this is impossible for me. i'm actually going to abstain....though if you wanted a blowout, the real trouncing would be the the LAST four zep records vs. the last four ozzy sabbath, zep wins that by a mile, which is kind of why i think they are a better band at the end of the day, also better rhythm section.

Its a close one but I feel Sabbath's first 4 have been far more influential on the course of music than Zeppelin's

Actually listening to the first albums of both bands, strikes me that Sabbath were rather influenced by Zep - not that it matters much

Matt, we agree to disagree. And I think Sabbath had the better rhythm section. Jazzier, more flexible.

Zep for sure

these kinds of polls just tear families apart!

but why zep? (xpost)

sabbath.

I don't care about the "influence" question - too slippery a concept and not really one that has anything to do with the enjoyability of the actual musical content. I love both but probably return to Zep more often ... probably because yes I guess I am a "muso" and there is a depth and breadth to Zep's playing that Sabbath just never really got to. Sabbath is more about a single, focused, lumbering monolith of sound but their range is a bit more limited - even in their quiet and gentler moments the gothic air of doom inflects everything. Zeppelin's first four cross such a weird and diverse range of musical terrain - and with a wider emotional pallette (does Sabbath ever convey a single moment of joy, for example?) - its more engaging to me because there's simply more to pick out and focus on. Also yeah better, more versatile rhythm section (I've always said the JPJ is the real secret weapon of Zep, vastly underrated)

"Also yeah better, more versatile rhythm section..."

I think this is incorrect.

Not an opinion shared my many others I fear

the only arguments i can think of now involve saying something and then going "...NOT"

Zep more irritating than Sabs

... e.g. that thing where Plant sings along with Page's solos or vice versa

re: the rhythm section, Ward/Butler never pulled off anything like Gallows Pole or When the Levee Breaks or even something as gentle and straightforward as Tangerine - whereas Bonham/Jones DID do pretty much every trick Ward/Butler tried.

... e.g. that thing where Plant sings along with Page's solos or vice versa

this does not happen on the first four Zep records

(unless I'm forgetting something a couple spots Whole Lotta Love...? which is possible)

a couple spots IN Whole Lotta Love, sheesh

Doesn't he do it on the first album? "Dazed and Confused" perhaps?

I mean Zep did Sabbath's slow-and-heavy/shift into doubletime thing, they did the quiet bongos, they did rumbling, swinging blues beats - what else did Sabbath's rhythm section have in their arsenal that Zep did not...?

unfortunately, this is making it sound like I don't like Sabbath, which is not at all the case. love love love 'em

x-post

"Not an opinion shared my many others I fear"

Whatever. It's mine. I think unperson once wrote a whole article on the supremacy of the Sabbath rythm section, I wish he was here.

Shakey-listen to Wicked World. Never heard Bonham, who I love, pull any shit like that. And I'm sure JPJ could have handled the bassline of After Forever, but he never did anything as interesting. And Heaven and Hell is one of the best bass albums of all time. Unbelivable Steve Harris-like performance

"what else did Sabbath's rhythm section have in their arsenal that Zep did not...?"

Jazz, dude, jazz

Tom I've always associated Zep's more bloated 30-minute solos+"oh noes Percy is scatting!" moments with their live sets - on record I think they really reined it in, which I appreciate

x-post

waitaminit Heaven and Hell is not one of the first four Sabbath albums... Wicked World I can't remember off the top of my head, but duly noted!

Plus Sabbath didn't do any of the "ooh baby baby" shit or ponderous rip-offs of more talented Chicago bluesmen. I get even more convinced of my vote the more I write.

Zep more irritating than Sabs

OTM ^^ hence my vote.

Correct on H&H, I was just talking about the rythym section, I got off topic. Also, I do like Zep, just not all of it.

Tom I've always associated Zep's more bloated 30-minute solos+"oh noes Percy is scatting!" moments with their live sets - on record I think they really reined it in, which I appreciate

Agreed! I like the fact that Bonham's not jazzy! It made him different from Ginger Baker, Mitch Mitchell, most of the the big names among British rock drummers.

I can't spell rythym-I am an idiot

I wish there was more traffic on the "Last Four..." poll. I think that's an even more interesting discussion.

plant could be a bit much it's true. i can appreciate peeps problems w/him.

the whole ripping off riffs accusation against zep = zzzzzzzzsnore i'm so sick of it, john lee hooker didn't write kashmir

the jazz thing w/sabbath i don't really get at all. whereas zep could get downright funky.

i don't know both fantastic bands and i love them so much.

also, to me Dio era sabbath is a whole nother animal and shouldn't really be compared in this conversation....Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules are better than...Outrider i guess....actually plants early solo stuff is sort of interesting/awesome, new-wave/world/classic rock fusion music

actually plants early solo stuff is sort of interesting/awesome, new-wave/world/classic rock fusion music

definitely! I agree the further away he got from his "ooh baby"-bluesman schtick the better he got

It's worth noting that AFAIK Willie Dixon won his suit primarily on grounds of lyrical similarities. I haven't heard the Small Faces version but similar delivery of one line != being a ripoff artist (though I don't think is actually what you're saying.) Compare what LZ did with "You Need Love" to e.g. the Stones' interpretation of "Little Red Rooster."

(Janis Joplin on "Summertime" sounds eerily proto-Plant to me FWIW.)

Are people so rigorous about critiquing 'ripping off' when it happens in old blues styles or 50s pop songs? Robert Palmer wrote: "... several of Dixon's copyrights are of material from the folk-blues public domain -- tunes like 'My Babe' were current in the South long before he claimed them. It is the custom, in blues music, for a singer to borrow verses from contemporary sources, both oral and recorded, add his own tune and/or arrangement, and call the song his own." What do we think of that? Is the difference mainly one of class/economics? I can see why there's an issue of economic justice with these young white millionaires profiting off songs that were at least partially authored by people in a different class position but I'm not sure that there's a major artistic/creative problem with LZ's versions of the songs.

million xposts

"...I don't think this is actually..."

yeah, sorry to all the lz fans but live sabbath makes zep look like a gang of nancy aristocrats

That's a big part of what I like about them!

I mean, Page and Plant don't need Sabbath to make them look like nancy aristocrats.

Page's sweater = classic

knuckledraggers vs. nancy boys

I feel compelled to point out that most of the arguments put forward in Sabbath's favor seem to center around Zeppelin's faults rather than any of Sabbath's specific virtues (which have not been very clearly spelled out, I don't think)

Hah! I was just comin' here to post my fave Sabbath live performance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtqy4DTHGqg

like "Zeppelin sucks therefore Sabbath's first four win by default" = not the most rigorous argument

What are you doing, grading our papers? What I like about Sabbath is their sheer intensity, even though it's heavy and the subject matter is often gloomy, these guys were able to convey a certain beauty at the heart of their music. I find their music hits me emotionally, I get a sort of cathartic response from clips like the ones posted above, that four ruffians from a post-war shithole can come together and impact me like a cannonball to the gut 38 years after the fact, and 25 after I first heard them.

In other words=the ballsiest band to ever walk the planet.

B+

bill otm but shakey gets the zing

Wow, that's the best grade I ever gotted (kidding)

Bill to write a book about Sabbath's music and influence, like, yesterday, man! Please!!

I don't have the chops, intelligence or work ethic to ever write a book!

...that four ruffians from a post-war shithole can come together and impact me

see I think there's some class narrative underpinning a lot of the pro-Sabbath sentiment here (thickskulled blue collar vs. thieving aristocracy --> "fuck those rich snooty nancy boys!") that I don't really give a shit about. the personalities and narratives/mythologies behind the bands don't really matter so much to me, particularly since we're ostensibly comparing a specific set of recordings.

i can appreciate a bunch of these arguments, and i love both these bands a whole bunch.

sabbath -- at least the first four (sorry bill i still can't dig on never say die and technical ecstacy is only "okay" to me) has a certain unity of purpose, they feel modern in a way that zeppelin doesn't -- i.e. in some ways zeppelin seems like a 60s band that was popular in the 70s whereas sabbath feels like a true 70s band, a meaner vision for meaner times -- sabbath is probably more influential in the long terms, the minimalism and punishment has shown up in almost every genre since...

...zeppelin i love for the sheer audacity of the whole thing. the sheer force of will and ego it would take to be led zeppelin, which on paper is probably the most ridiculous thing ever to exist in pop culture...they were fancy, like how rolls royce probably still uses real wood in their dashboards for no reason....their whole god imagery, rampaging knights that thought they could do anything -- reggae, metal, rock n' roll, even synth pop and country at the end, just because...because they were zeppelin and no one else was. and the thing is that -- for how foolish the whole thing is -- it WORKS, at least most of the time.

Any perceived class thing has very little impact on me, even though I put it in there. I'm a Yank. What matters to me ultimately the music.

And Matt just did a much better job than I did explaining this stuff.

these narratives are embedded in the recordings themselves. my reactions to the records were forged in my preteen metal mind, and it was only later (much much later) that I understood how my reactions were byproducts of picking up on the signifiers. zep's records have ornamental, byzantine qualities, a regal sense of endowment and bounty; that doesn't really grab me aesthetically. sabbath's grubby myopia which miraculously never stops giving, well, it's like black magic, something that grew out of the earth. I still love those records after all these years and a million plays.

on the other hand, it's hard for me to make it all the way through a zep record without thinking "y'know, robert plant is a cock of the third order" a couple dozen times.

xpost to shakey

it's hard for me to make it all the way through a zep record without thinking "y'know, robert plant is a cock of the third order" a couple dozen times.

lolz!

I can grasp how these narratives are married to the music for some - for me I came to Zeppelin fairly late (didn't dig in in any serious way until maybe 10 years ago) and all my impressions were formed after the fact and largely independently, sans older bros with bongs and posters and issues of CREEM or whatever, so for me it was like discovering an endless maze of allusions and references and influences that all coalesced around an incredibly energized and versatile center of four world-class musical whizzes. Sabbath I was actually into earlier (lolz stoner college years) and dug on a more primal level, borne of a love of singleminded devotion to a core aesthetic (also a big Spacemen 3 devotee around this time, no coincidence). These days more often than not I need to be in a particular mood to appreciate the monolithic minimalism - but Zep's catalog is so wide-ranging there's almost always *something* in there that I'll find that diverts my attention, no matter what the circumstances.

(^^^^also why I tend to return to Spiritualized more often than Spacemen 3)

more often than not I need to be in a particular mood to appreciate the monolithic minimalism

this is an interesting euphemism for being stoned

oh I still smoke a fair amount of weed I won't deny it

TONY WHERE THE FUCK IS YR MUSTACHE???

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRhZISswW_k

Sabbath...you have the godly s/t and Masters of Reality, as well as the underrated Vol. 4...even Paranoid, which has the lame title track, rocks....

I love Zeppelin, but Sab wins this one hands down.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

zep for me....soundtrack of my teen years.

Bill, if not a book, could you put together a Top 20 or even 10 albums list here?

"lame title track"?!?! BJO hates fun.

I voted for Zep way up above, but practically my fave paragraph of rock crit ever is Glenn O'Brien encountering the "Paranoid" clip from "Beat Club," deciding he's seeing Redd Kross (in 1986) and deeming it, approvingly, "janitorial."

hmmm pretty interesting poll concept
i love both bands, but i'm not going to take this as a contest as to which band i prefer, but am simply going to weigh the first four records of each band against each other - in other words, try and determine which is the better string of releases. and the answer is probably black sabbath, because all of the band's best material is clearly captured in those first four glorious outings. zep still had some of their best, most fearless and creative material in front of them. black sabbath also has the two best records out of the eight as far as i'm concerned ('volume 4' and 'master of reality'). zep III is nipping at the heels, however, and zep II is an unforgettable rock 'n' roll statement.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

hahaha

A CLEAR WINNER!

i guess the silent majority is real

it's just weird how unbalanced these threads can be in terms of posters vs. votes (is there even anyone on this thread championing Zep besides me?)

Um the first poster?

And the third one?

And a bunch after that?

oh a bunch of people said they VOTED for Zep, but the majority of the arguing is all pro-Sabbath, Plant is a cockfarmer lolz etc

Plant IS a cockfarmer. Still voted Zep. Still love Sabbath.

this would be a travesty if the results weren't so close

but it's only a poll... an ilm poll

yet its implications on the future of the free world are devastating. Take heed, brother.

I think Zeppelin are fantastic. But Sabbath are heavier and definitely more to my liking.

To a degree, radio play and fame have watered down the power and impact of Zeppelin. Sabbath still retains a more untouched purity that continues to resonate.

Also, Zeppelin knew what they were doing. Sabbath kinda sorta didn't. And that naivety continues to work in their favor. They ripped open the gate without even meaning to.

Damn, ILM blew it here. I hope I do better when it really counts in November.

United States Of Sabbath vs. Zeppelinland lol