Black Sabbath "Paranoid" [1970]

A music reviewer's dream, "Paranoid" has everything worth ridiculing about heavy metal in one single album. Heck, you could make the argument Track 1 ("War Pigs") accomplishes this all by itself (though "Iron Man" is even worse): smooth-brained intelligence, comic-book sentimentality and guitars so sludgy they're the aural equivalent of walking through four feet of mud. That these special-ed English stoners thought they were making profound statements is beer-through-the-nose laugh-inducing, although their extended, preposterous 7-minute jazz-metal suites ensure the fun won't last. Basically, had JRR Tolkein been aware how his fantastical journeys were to be bastardized by the likes of aggressively permanent 6th graders such as Black Sabbath, he never would have bothered writing anything. Reeking of ditch weed and Cliffs Notes, it's fairly obvious Ozzy Osbourne and the rest of these mouth-breathers had no idea what they were doing. That "Paranoid" accomplishes major suckitude in myriad ways simultaneously must be some sort of testament to the occult -- nothing logical could explain it.