TO say that Black Sabbath changed the course of popular music would be quite an understatement. The Birmingham quartet pretty much laid the blueprint for all things doom laden and heavy since its eponymous debut in 1970.

Its initial run of eight studio albums are considered near faultless and their collective influence can still be heard reverberating in the noisier spectrum of music. With anthemic songs about mental health (Paranoid) to the insatiable hunger of the military complex (War Pigs), Black Sabbath wrote some of heavy metal’s defining tunes that continues to sound thoroughly epic and majestic even today.