Speculative Fiction part 1; Black Sabbath broke up in 1973

[i](The Speculative Fiction series is an exercise in narrative merely done to practice my writing skills, the speculative fiction genre has reached history, but not music and it would be fun to imagine; what if Led Zeppelin never recorded Starway to Heaven? What if Grunge never had commercial success? These stories will be presented in faux wiki-like enries)[/i]

[artist]Black Sabbath[/artist] was an influential [tag]heavy metal[/tag]/[tag]doom metal[/tag]/[tag]stoner metal [/tag]/[tag]sludge metal[/tag] band formed in 1968 as a heavy blues band originally called Earth. Its members were Ozzy Osbourne (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar), Terence "Geezer" Butler (bass), and Bill Ward (drums).
After a string of successes such as [track artist=Black Sabbath]Paranoid[/track], [u]Walpurgis[/u], [track artist=Black Sabbath]Sweet Leaf[/track], [track artist=Black Sabbath]Behind the wall of Sleep[/track], the band was ripe with internal conflict due to substance abuse problems. While seen simply as a source of inspiration by drummer Bill Ward, the other members felt otherwise. Ward was fired from the band just after work on the band's fourth album; [track artist=Black Sabbath]Snowblind[/track]. Ward would then go on to join [artist]Rinky Dink & The Crystal[/artist]. Black Sabbath recruited Ian Paice, formerly of [artist]Deep Purple[/artist], as a replacement drummer for the [i]Snowblind[/i] world tour.

The band returned to Los Angeles to begin work on a fifth album which Tom Allom was slated to produce.They rented a house in Bel Air to begin working on new songs, but fatigue and substance abuse haunted the band once again, as well as a great disagreement on which direction the band should take. Tommi Iommi wanted to continue with the gloomy heavy metal sound he helped create while Ian Paice, with other sensibilities and Tom Meehan, the band producer, wanted them to go in a whole different direction.

"Ideas weren't coming out the way they were on Snowblind and we really got discontent" Iommi said. "Everybody was sitting there waiting for me to come up with something. I just couldn't think of anything. And if I didn't come up with anything, nobody would do anything."

In that moment Tommy Iommi left the band to return to England. While visiting a dungeon in a castle in Wales Iommi got the inspiration for the riff that would become his first hit with the band he would later found; [album artist=Black Sabbath]Seventh Star[/album], whose first album [track artist=Black Sabbath]Killing Yourself to live[/track] was a critical success.

Despite its relative short life Black Sabbath proved to be a big influence in other bands. The American band The Hands of Doom, who helped mature the sludge-doom sound in the early eighties, took their name from a Black Sabbath Song.

Discography:
-Black Sabbath (1970)
-Walpurgis (1970)
-Master of Reality (1971)
-Snowblind (1972)