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Episode details

Radio Ulster,08 Jun 2025,59 mins

Black Sabbath - Paranoid

Long Player with Steven Rainey

Available for 27 days

Very few albums manage to fuse together themes of insanity, nuclear Armageddon, time-travelling robots, skinheads, and the Vietnam war... but Black Sabbath's Paranoid is something special. Emerging out of the post-hippie era, the Birmingham band fused molten slabs of riff-driven rock to socially aware lyrics, and in doing so, invented HEAVY METAL. Steven Rainey looks back at the creation of this seminal album, exploring where it came from, how it works, and what it spawned, using classic tracks, and some archive interviews with the band.

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