If Deep Purple were a death machine, Black Sabbath were a meat-grinder for the corpses. Paranoid is where Sabbath fully realised the blueprint laid out in their primary recordings and investigated it over a full-length album. From the skull-crushing guitar tone achieved by Tony Iommi to the doom-laden lyrics of singer Ozzy Osbourne – the only man who can rhyme “masses” with “masses” – Paranoid conjures a compelling, hermetic night-world where heavy rock finds its most outrageous expression to that date.