I finally got round to buying the first Black Sabbath album on CD yesterday (long story), the enclosed booklet includes the sleeve notes from the original gatefold album cover, which really set the bar very high for subsequent decades of Goth-schlock horror pretentiousness:
Still falls the rain, the veils of darkness shroud the blackened trees, which, contorted by some unseen violence, shed their tired leaves and bend their boughs towards a grey earth of severed bird wings. Among the grasses, poppies bleed before a gesticulating death and young rabbits, born dead in traps, stand motionless as though guarding the silence that surrounds and threatens to engulf all those that would listen.
Mute birds, tired of repeating yesterday's terrors, huddle together in the recesses of dark corners, heads turned from the dead, black swan that floats upturned in a small pool in the hollow. There emerges from this pool a faint sensual mist, that traces its way upwards to caress the chipped feet of the headless martyr's statue, whose only achievement was to die too soon and who couldn't wait to lose.
The cataract of darkness forms fully, the long black night begins, yet still, by the lake a young girl waits, unseeing she believes herself unseen. She smiles faintly at the distant tolling bell and the still falling rain"
It's a blinding album though, certainly one of the best albums of all time. Apparently it was recorded and mixed in two days.
