SABTOLOGIST

So there I was, fourteen years old with a new found enlightenment of heavy metal music. Needless to say I began to inquire about this band that I had so recently unearthed in my ears. I started my quest in the music section of the local department store but their record and cassette selection was slim pickins to say the least. I then began to scour the music stores on scarce family trips to the mall. I originally was looking for the album with the song "The Mob Rules" contained there-in, however, being the novice Black Sabbath collector I was overwhelmed with a vaste library of back issued albums that untill then I had no idea even exsisted. With so much to choose from and not knowing where to begin I stuck to my original plan to find the one album I had set my sights on. What its' title was I had no idea. Determined to not leave empty handed I resorted to phase 2, cover art work. Being an artist of sorts myself, certain covers would capture my attention and on this particular day that album happened to be Heaven and Hell. The artwork featured three Angels sitting in a group smoking cigarettes and playing a game of cards. Very prolific in my opinion and I decided I had to start somewhere and so proceeded to purchase this cassette tape. I was not disappointed in my decision.
 
The ride home from the mall was a good half an hour and we, as a family ritual, would always stop at McDonalds to eat lunch adding another 20 minutes or so to the trip. This gave me ample time to pop my new purchase into my big, awkward portable cassette player (sort of a first generation Sony Walkman) and give it a listen. Although the song I had originally set forth to find was not included on this collection, I none-the-less sat mesmerized in the back seat of the family car as each song cranked in my headphones a revolution of heaviness. "This is it", I said to myself, "This is my favorite band." From that point on I had become an archeologist of Black Sabbath and began to dig deeper into their history, discography and lifestyle, constantly revealing lost classics and information relating to the band. I would not realize, for almost a year, the magnitude of what I was revealing.