My recent listens:

Well, Ozzys death brought me to listening to a lot of Black Sabbath all over again. My favorites are still the debut and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath so far but I love all their stuff up to Sabotage for sure. I like how bluesy and very 1970 the debut sounds. I’m a big fan of “Warning” the closing track (besides the main classics). I like how Tony just goes nuts with the soloing on guitar throughout that whole track. He didn’t have the spotlight on his playing as much later I don’t think so it is really interesting.

I also really appreciate those 2 lesser albums after Sabotage, the fact that they were even made and they still have Ozzy on them in retrospect. They’re not that great but there’s a couple cool songs. I love when they were really melodic and Beatlesque for a heavy metal band or doing stuff like “Fluff”, which is simple but honestly one of the most beautiful songs I’ve heard and one of my faves of all time. Its cool basically Tony Iommi doing all the instruments on there when I thought it was Rick Wakeman.

Been wondering why I haven’t really heard Deep Purple all that much either. I heard from the 1969 albums until Machine Head and they had some killer songs. I love that distorted organ/guitar interplay and am wondering why more people didn’t work with that style. Songs like Space Truckin and Hard Lovin Man are just absolutely fucking badass (Jon Lord was legendary) and Ian was so ahead of his time with that proto-metal wailing that would be popular in the 80s.

Mark I was interesting in that they were more of a psych band, with some orchestral sections and a more “epic” feel. Mark II really went forward with the intense proto metal stuff which i actually like better. I generally like psych more than heavy metal but I like how influential they obviously became when Ian joined.

They could be a bit inconsistent with hook less songs or songs that aren’t as strong as the highlights like “Somebodys Daughter” but I definitely slept on this band for too long.