Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock

by Steven Hyden

What offended the first wave of rock critics was that Black Sabbath seemed to have no political consciousness. Sabbath was among the bands blamed for reducing the utopian idealism of the sixties down to mindless parking-lot hedonism. Even Aleister Crowley had an ethos—the kids who toked up to “Sweet Leaf” didn’t seem to believe in anything. That this criticism of Sabbath ignores “War Pigs”—surely one of the three or four greatest antiwar songs in rock history—is beside the point. Black Sabbath did have a political consciousness, but that’s not what makes it great or important. Black Sabbath is great precisely because it transcends transient stuff such as politics. Vol. 4 will never be tied to a particular year or ideology or set of passing trends. You put it on and it just sounds like rock ’n’ roll. And to me, rock ’n’ roll has always been the clearest path to a higher power. Sex and drugs are amazing, but they’ll only get you so far. Sex and drugs signify something else to me now than they did when I was nineteen. But Vol. 4 feels exactly the same.