Black Sabbath

It’s simple, really: no Black Sabbath, no heavy metal.

The Birmingham quartet may have risen from the British blues-rock boom of the late ‘60s, but their sledgehammer riffs and bulldozer rhythms exuded an apocalyptic aura that spawned a whole new kind of devil’s music.

The doomy tritone riff that opens their 1970 self-titled debut pried open the crypt leading to rock’s netherworld, summoning the inimitable voice of Ozzy Osbourne, who traded the chest-puffing, girl-crazy machismo of the typical hard-rock frontman for the dread-ridden delivery that could only come from a working-class kid raised in a no-hope industrial town.