Somewhere in every good music fan's basement is a worn-out copy of either the vinyl, eight-track, or cassette of
Black Sabbath
's
We Sold Our Soul for Rock 'n' Roll
. The 1976 compilation captured the darkest and beefiest moments from the
Ozzy
years and served as a right of passage for millions of aspiring musicians, burnouts, pastor's kids, and closet miscreants.
Rhino
's 16-track
Greatest Hits 1970-1978
anthology only trumps the single-disc
We Sold Our Soul
CD by two songs, but it offers superior sound and features at least a few cuts from 1976's
Technical Ecstasy
and 1978's
Never Say Die!
, the band's last two pre-millennium
records. All of the faves are here (
"Paranoid,"
"War Pigs,"
"Iron Man"
), as well as fan classics like
"Hole in the Sky"
and
"Supernaut,"
but there is enough material missing to call it a sampler rather than a "best of." Fans who are unwilling to shell out the extra money for
Sanctuary
's superior two-disc
Sabbath
collection from 2005 will find this sparse yet solid overview to be a useful "CliffsNotes" rendering of the birth of
heavy metal
. ~ James Christopher Monger