Buttkickin' Halloween Songs: "Megalomania" -- Black Sabbath (1976)

I hide myself inside the shadows of shame
The silent symphonies were playing their game
My body echoed to the dreams of my soul
This God is something that I could not control…

Told you I’d be back with some Sabbath 🙂

Black Sabbath’s 1976 album Sabotage is probably their greatest album with the WORST album cover. Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler are hanging about in full 70s leisure wear and pornstaches aplenty, while Ozzy looks like a goofball in that kimono and why on EARTH is Bill Ward wearing red tights?? I haven’t the slightest. It’s too bad, because even with such a lousy cover the album is fantastic. Sabotage is my favorite Sabbath album, and I’d argue that it’s their best (at least, the best of the classic Ozzy line-up). But as I’m oft to repeat, that’s a knish for another deli…

My favorite cut on the album is the Side 1 closer Megalomania, a dark, gloomy, haunting number about one man struggling with his schizophrenic delusions of godhood and elite self-importance. It’s a slow burn of metal destruction that erupts mid-song into this explosive, driving rebellion against his split personality, determined to rescue his own soul from the fires of Hell.

The most terrifying nightmares are those locked in our minds, the ones we can’t outrun or escape. Sabbath nailed it with this one.

Obsessed with fantasy, possessed with my schemes
I mixed reality with pseudo-god dreams
The ghost of violence was something I seen
I sold my soul to be the human obscene…
How could this poison be the dream of my soul?
How did my fantasies take complete control?