Burning the Torch on "13"

The fathers of metal...the procreators of hard rock...the daddy's of doom...maybe not that last one, but Black Sabbath, the founders of rock's loudest and heaviest sect, is back with their newest release, 13.  Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, and Geezer Butler show no age reuniting while leaving Bill Ward, their longtime drummer, as well as their health restrictions and Black Sabbath catalogue circa 1983-1995 in the dust.  With their return also comes the revival of arbitrary album covers, proving that Sabbath really is back.

Being arbitrary makes up a big part of "being metal."  The metal community feeds itself on "being metal."  But what does it mean to be "metal"?  Wearing black and studs?  Being down with the devil?  Combining words like "goat" and "whore" to name your band?  Asking John Wayne Gacy to design your album's cover art?

John Wayne Gacy's design for Acid Bath's  debut album

Screaming "SLAAAAYEEEEER" at the most opportune times?  These many facets of "being metal" has become a sort of joke in the community itself.  However, everyone outside the circle takes the metal community way too seriously.  There's a reason why the masses blame Marilyn Manson, Rammstein, Pantera and other metal bands for acts of violence instead of Justin Bieber, Rihanna, or Beyonce.

GWAR disemboweling Snooki 

Though, these attempts at "being metal" show that metal bands don't even take themselves seriously (with some restrictions, like the As I Lay Dying singer who hired a bounty hunter to whack his wife).  So why try so hard to be so "metal"?  Is it metal to name your band "Pissing Razorblades?"  No, but it's hilarious.  Is it metal to disembowel a lifesize plastic Snooki doll on stage?  No, it's actually disgusting, but also hilarious.  And what does this tangent about metal have to do with the album art for 13?  Because burning a giant "13" on the Buckingham countryside outside London for the flames to be seen from miles is actually pretty fuckin' metal.

Before we light the torch on 13, let's take a look at some Ozzy-era Sabbath album covers.  First, we have the classic self-titled Black Sabbath.  No other band at the time had ever released anything like this before.  With its sludgy riffs, loud bass, grizzly drums, and bellowing vocals, listening to this album for the first time is like your dad slapping you in the face after you just got a splinter pulled from your foot and yelling, "SHUT UP, YOU'RE A MAN NOW."  And the cover perfectly reflects its musical style showing some creepy pale lady standing in a field behind some medieval houses, just like that one time when you and your friends decided to go camping in the Pocono's and you wandered across some territory you probably shouldn't have.

In 1973, the band came out with Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, their fifth album in just three years.  The cover features a demon-possessed bed attempting to consume its subject like a Satanist version of the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa.  The guy on the bed looks shocked, like, "why is my bed trying to possess me?"  But let's be honest, that's what you get when you have a bed with "666" molded in at the top.

Now, over 30 years later, Ozzy has stopped hanging out with the wrong crowd (Justin Bieber in Best Buy commercials –– it's okay Ozzy, we've all had Bieber Fever before) to record a new Sabbath album.  And what better way to reestablish yourself as the archetypal metal band than burn an eight-foot-tall number "13"?  It may seem arbitrary, but the beauty of it comes from its simplicity –– no complex design, no agonizing graphics, just a blazing-orange "13" in a dusked blue field.  Now that's metal.