Hand Of Doom Black Sabbath

Hand of Doom Album: Paranoid (1970-71)
by Black Sabbath

Sabbath bass player Geezer Butler wrote the lyric about heroin addiction. It was inspired by seeing all the syringes left on the ground by audience members at their shows.

Running 7:08, "Hand Of Doom" is part of the second Black Sabbath album, Paranoid, a breakthrough for the band.

Paranoid is the second studio album released on 18 September 1970, by Vertigo Records in the United Kingdom and on 7 January 1971, by Warner Bros. Records in the United States. The album contains several of the band's signature songs, including "Iron Man", "War Pigs" and the title track, which was the band's only Top 20 hit, reaching number 4 on the UK singles chart.

Paranoid is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential heavy metal albums of all time, often cited as a key influence for the development of the genre, as well as one of its earliest albums. It was ranked number one on Rolling Stone's list of the "100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time" in 2017 and number 139 on its list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” in 2020. Paranoid was the band's only album to top the UK Albums Chart until the release of 13 in 2013.

Iommi joined Jethro Tull for two weeks in 1968. He appeared with Tull on The Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus special, miming "A Song for Jeffrey." Iommi didn't like Jethro Tull's organization, in which he was treated more like an employee than a bandmate. However, he did learn by observing Tull's disciplined rehearsal routines, and brought that professional work ethic back to the band with Ozzy, Geezer, and Bill. Shortly after becoming more structured, the band started writing the songs that would later be recorded for Black Sabbath.

After working with Jethro Tull, Iommi bought a flute and occasionally played it live. For the most part, it didn't work out.

Paranoid was originally titled War Pigs, but the record company allegedly changed it out of fear of a backlash from supporters of the ongoing Vietnam War. Additionally, the band's label felt the title track was more marketable as a single. Ozzy Osbourne states in I Am Ozzy that the name change had nothing to do with the Vietnam War, and was entirely due to the record company deciding the album would be easier to sell if it was named after the single, which had already had significant success by the time the album was released, reaching number 4 on the UK Singles Chart. It was too late, however, to alter the artwork. Joe Smith, who was executive vice-president at Warner Bros. from 1970 to 1972, told Classic Albums that the rest of Warner Bros. didn't want anything to do with them: "We were in the midst of the war ourselves in this country and what their reasoning was not that important to me. I knew we weren't going to call it 'War Pigs'."Regarding the song "Paranoid", Smith recalls, "It was on an acetate. I remember playing it and turning the sound way up and shaking the whole building ... I said 'I think that's the breakthrough album. I don't understand it but that 'Paranoid' sounds like a great title for an album and a great title for a single. "That album title had nothing to do with the sleeve," Osbourne explained to Phil Alexander in 1998. "What the fuck does a bloke dressed as a pig with a sword in his hand got to do with being paranoid, I don't know, but they decided to change the album title without changing the artwork."

The cover, with the original War Pigs title in mind, was designed and shot by Keith McMillan (credited as Keef) in Black Park. His assistant, Roger Brown, was the model.[14] The original UK vinyl release was in a gatefold sleeve featuring a black-and-white photo of the band, posed outdoors on a grassy hill. Also shot by Keith McMillan, it was the band's first appearance on album artwork.

They originally called their jazz-blues band Polka Tulk, later renaming themselves Earth, and they played extensively in Europe. In early 1969, they decided to change their name again when they found that they were being mistaken for another group called Earth. Butler had written a song called "Black Sabbath" that took its title from a novel by occult writer Dennis Wheatley called The Devil Rides Out, in which a Satanic ritual called a Black Sabbath is described. The group adopted it as their new name and often played up the demonic angle, even though it was mostly an act. Ozzy once said: "The only black magic Sabbath ever got into was a box of chocolates."

They were one of the first bands to be considered "heavy metal." The phrase was introduced musically by the 1968 Steppenwolf song "Born To Be Wild," but in literature it showed up in the 1961 William Burroughs novel The Soft Machine.

Prior to the group truly coming together, Iommi worked in an industrial factory. He eventually decided to quit and become a full-time working guitarist. During the last few hours of his last day on the job, his hand became caught in a piece of equipment, severing the tips of his fingers on his right (fretting) hand.

Losing the tips of the fingers on your hand is a debilitating accident for a guitarist, but Iommi found a unique way to soldier on. After battling depression over the accident for quite some time, he was visited by his supervisor from the factory, who brought along some Django Reinhardt records. Reinhardt was a jazz guitarist from the mid-20th century who had a disability - several of his fingers had been fused together in a fire. When Iommi heard Reinhardt play (and after receiving a pep talk from his supervisor) he decided that he could overcome his misfortune. He tried various ways to cover and/or extend his fingertips, to dull the pain he now had when trying to play and to make the tips themselves move more easily over the strings. What he finally came up with was taking a plastic detergent bottle, melting it, shaping it into thimble-like prosthetics, sanding them down, and covering them with leather from several jackets until he found one with the right feel. After taking care to form the new tips to snugly fit his fingers, and experimenting with various bonding agents to secure them, Iommi found that he could play again with minimal pain.

The tune is called Hand of Doom...