#ossy osbourne

[ravens-art-nest]

Battle Vest

Here is an update on my Battle Vest!

I now posses 30ft of chain so when I get more carabiners I will make more chains, and probably some jewelry too.

My hat.

[hellofmetal]

Metallica & Ozzy Osbourne - Iron Man & Paranoid

Rock And Hall Of Fame October 30, 2009

[sallylandillustration]

[mcneill00]

Ozzy Osbourne Bootleg Tee

[of-addictions-and-stuff]

(Non mine but it's just so beautiful that it's deserve more love.)

[mynamix]

[blacksabbathsabbath]

“Hand of Doom”

John:

You’ve probably seen that iconic scene at the beginning of Apocalypse Now where “The End” by The Doors plays as Martin Sheen stares at the ceiling, contemplating what’s ahead for him. Say what you will about The Doors (that Jim Morrison is the most garbage faux poet to still infect adolescents with a false sense of heroics, for instance) but that scene sort of works. Palpable dread and restlessness. Yearning for a return to darkness. The sense that your future is almost predestined, whether it’s killing Colonel Kurtz or simply accepting the fate of death in “Hand of Doom.”

So is it drugs or is it hellfire or is it something else entirely? Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe the hell is entirely constructed within the context of our lives and experiences, and evil is an experience we create through general suffering.

Great, now I sound like a terrible faux-poet. (fauxet?)

Anyway, as I listen to “Hand of Doom,” I think back to the idea of Side A of Black Sabbath as a suite. And I wonder if, too, Paranoid up to this point is a story. A sort of digression from the Vietnam War into a more science fiction-y Apocalypse. After all, that was on the minds of many who grew disillusioned in the era. War was no longer a great shared sacrifice, as the second World War had been spun into. Nope, war was hell, an end, an ongoing struggle without a clear entrance or exit, sending off soldiers to be less liberators and more cannon fodder. “War Pigs” introduces the war, where the lower class goes off to fight. “Paranoid” is the mental breakdown, “Planet Caravan” the mind wandering. “Iron Man” is the breaking point, “Electric Funeral” the fallout. And “Hand of Doom” is the aftermath. A junkie mess hiding the pain of the atrocity he’s witnessed.

Also, the song rules.

Laura:

I’m really digging John’s idea that Sabbath is working out narrative suites in Black Sabbath and Paranoid. With “Iron Man”, we have a man who feels compelled to save the thankless human race. Then we have “Electric Funeral” in which mankind brings doom upon itself through nuclear fallout. “Hand of Doom” tackles coping skills in the face of disillusionment. “First it was the bomb, Vietnam napalm/ Disillusioning, you push the needle in.” What perpetuates this downward spiral into drug use is completely out of the control of this addict; however, Sabbath doesn't take pity, which leads me to believe that this song isn’t necessarily about a single addict--it’s about humanity.

Geezer’s brooding bassline brings us into “Hand of Doom”, and we feel the highs and lows of humanity’s drug addiction with the entrance and exit of the dynamic, heavy guitar. As a society, we’re always looking forward to the next best thing. There’s always a bigger, better deal out there to replace or help us cope with the past. We feed off each other in that way: “You need someone to help you/to stick the needle in, yeah”--it’s easier to go with the masses and seek enablers than it is to change our ways.

The song takes a dark turn--suddenly, our choice of escape becomes that which kills us: “Push the needle in, face death's sickly grin/ Holes are in your skin, caused by deadly pin”. I have incredibly mixed feelings about the message Sabbath portrays here. Vonnegut’s fictionalization of PTSD in Slaughterhouse Five, one of the first prose representations of the disorder, shows the unsettling and difficult life of Billy Pilgrim after witnessing the firebombing of Dresden. Pilgrim struggles in daily life, experiencing post-traumatic episodes that range from being thrown back into the war to being hurled into an alien abduction scenario. I’m not sure how I would or even could cope in that situation. You would think that Black Sabbath would be a little more sympathetic here, having lived in Birmingham, a town ravaged by WWII bombings, but they show little pity here for the nuances of this experience. Like “Wicked World”, we have another polarized interpretation of a gray situation.

With that being said, I love “Hand of Doom”. When I step back and look at the track objectively, it’s Sabbath at its prime.

[fiskocreep]

slayer fans wil get this