Your favorite Sabbath riff

I grew up in a conservative Midwestern town. The first line of conversation was typically, “What’s your name?” The second was typically, “What church do you go to?”

Metal’s a lot like church – not necessarily in the worship of a deity (though orthodox black metal takes that slant). It’s like church, or any other community built around a cause, in that people gather regularly at events, wear their affiliations literally on their sleeves, and have an irrational faith in something. (In metal’s case, it’s that metal won’t suck. Keeping that faith, perhaps the subject of a future post, can be hard.)

When M. Drew, music editor at BloodyGoodHorror.com, approached me to participate in a group project answering the question, “What is your favorite Black Sabbath riff and why?”, I initially hesitated. “What a transparent ploy to get web traffic,” I thought. “Catering to the lowest denominator!” I tend to think the worst of people.

But as I got into the exercise, it felt less like an exercise. In fact, I realized that it was the equivalent of what Christians call “daily bread”; it was a periodic affirmation of faith. Sabbath riffs are about as sacred as anything gets for me. I’m sure that’s true for many other metalheads.

Drew was really asking the metal equivalent of “What church do you go to?”.

My favorite Sabbath riff goes like this:

You can see what I wrote about it, as well as commentary from Eddie Trunk, Henry Rollins, and more here.

How does your favorite Sabbath riff go?

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