Heavy Metal History Archives

Recorded live at L'Olympia in Paris on December 19, 1970.

This gig is celebrated for its incredible, unfiltered energy. The classic original lineup Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward just barely out of their teenage years, yet they played with a ferocity that seemed to forge an entirely new genre. The legendary performance of Black Sabbath in Paris (often circulated by The Obelisk as part of the Paris/Brussels television broadcast from late 1970) captures the band at their raw, creative, and devastating peak. Recorded just as their masterpiece album Paranoid was released, the concert is widely celebrated as the primordial birth of Heavy Metal...