Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider recalled the first time he became a fan of Black Sabbath when he was a young boy during his recent interview with Classic Rock. Also, he talked about the satanic tone of Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut studio album’s influences on teens.
As you may know, Black Sabbath is defined as the milestone of the heavy metal genre. The band released their debut studio album entitled ‘Black Sabbath’ on February 13, 1970. The album is considered the first heavy metal album and drew great attention, especially from teenagers with the help of its unique sounds and lyrics. So, many people became a fan of metal when they first listened to ‘Black Sabbath.’
The tracks of ‘Black Sabbath’ consisted of certain themes such as evil, paganism, satanism, and the occult which would be the key elements of heavy metal later. For instance, ‘N.I.B’ was written and composed to reflect the thoughts and feelings of Lucifer himself. In his interview, Dee Snider emphasized that Black Sabbath affected many teenagers with their Satanic sounds and lyrics, which drew them closer to love the evil and Satan.
Moreover, Snider also revealed that he became a fan of Black Sabbath after a high school battle of bands while he was sitting in the audience and heard a band playing their song. He also formed a band some years later that only played the songs of Black Sabbath. Dee added that teens were so much under the influence of Black Sabbath’s Satanic sounds that they would should ‘fuck love’ to Ozzy Osbourne whenever he expressed the band’s love towards them.
Snider recalled these times during his conversation by saying:
“Dang, dang, daaaaaaaaaang! The Devil’s Third, the basis of all heavy metal, and the cornerstone of Sabbath’s life-changing sound. Sabbath started out as a jazz-blues fusion band named Earth, but when Tony Iommi first played this and saw the audience’s reaction, they knew they were onto something new.
I first heard this at a high school battle of the bands, I was in the audience, and one of the bands played it with all the lights out, and I literally went, ‘What the fuck is this?’
I bought the album the next day, and that was it, I was a Sabbath fan for life. In junior high school, I had a band that only played Black Sabbath. You’d see Sabbath live and Ozzy would be all, ‘We love you!’ and all the kids would be saying, ‘We love you? Fuck that! We want evil, man, evil!'”
As it can be understood from his statement, Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut studio album inspired Snider’s choice of music as a profession, and this choice led him to become the frontman of one of the most popular and commercially successful metal bands.
