Analysis of ‘Paranoid’

I: Introduction

Paranoid is the second album by Black Sabbath, released in September 1970 in the UK, and in the US in January of 1971. Several of the band’s signature songs come from this album: its title track, “War Pigs,” “Iron Man,” and “Fairies Wear Boots.” “Paranoid” is Black Sabbath’s only top 20 hit, reaching #4 in the UK, and #1 on the US Billboard Hot Hard Rock Songs in July 2025, for the first time in 55 years since its original release.

Paranoid was completed quickly, recorded in only a few days, as was the band’s debut album (recorded in a single 12-hour session). It’s regarded as one of the greatest and most influential heavy metal albums of all time, defining the genre. Rolling Stone ranked it #1 on their list of the “100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time” in 2017, and #139 on its list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” in 2020.

Here‘s a link to the full album, and here is a link to all the lyrics.

II: War Pigs

The song was originally to be called “Walpurgis,” with different lyrics, about Walpurgis Night, or as bassist/lyricist Terry “Geezer” Butler put it, “the Satanic version of Christmas.” For him, the real Satanists of the world are the warmongering politicians and bankers who make the poor fight their wars for them, so the original lyric’s talk of Devil-worshippers is just a metaphor for the rich and powerful.

Still, the nervous record company executives wanted nothing to do with a song lyric about Satanism, so it had to be changed into something more directly anti-war–hence, “Walpurgis” became “War Pigs.”

The song is in E (actually, all of the songs on Side One of the album, as well as “Electric Funeral,” opening Side Two, are in E), with a frequent power chord alternation back and forth between D and E (also happening often in the other songs just mentioned). Indeed, the intro of “War Pigs” is guitarist Tony Iommi playing E and D chords back and forth while a civil defence siren is heard in the background. Sometimes, Iommi plays E suspension 4th and E major chords.

Then we come to the iconic guitar riff of D-E, with drummer Bill Ward‘s hi-hat hit closed, then one time open, then three times closed again, before the next D-E riff. This whole cycle is heard twice, then singer Ozzy Osbourne comes in.

Vestiges of the old “Walpurgis” lyric can be heard in the comparison between “Generals…in their masses” with “witches at black masses” and “Evil minds that plot destruction/Sorcerer of death’s construction.”

Since the song was written while the Vietnam War was still going on, “the bodies burning” can be heard as a clear allusion to the effects of napalm, something also referred to in “Hand of Doom.” As we hear this song today, though, “the bodies burning” can make us think of Palestinian children caught in burning buildings and tents as a result of the IDF bombing in Gaza. These latter may not have been in fields, but the flattening of their cities may make them in a metaphorical sense like fields.

The last two lines of the first verse, about “hatred” and “brainwashed minds,” gives us an idea of the “poisoning” effect of propaganda in the corporate, bourgeois mainstream media, which is always inculcating the idea of who our ‘enemies’ are: back at the time of the writing of the song, it was those ‘dirty commie Reds,’ the Viet Cong ‘gooks’; in the 2000s, it was ‘radical Islam’; in the 2010s, it was Gaddafi, Assad, and Putin; in the 2020s, it’s been all Russians, Chinese, and the Iranian ‘regime’ (as Michael Parenti once observed, we in the West have governments; elsewhere, they have ‘regimes’ that must be overthrown and replaced with ‘freedom and democracy.’

Next comes another famous Iommi riff: first, a repeat of the power chords of D-E, then power chords in G, F♯, F♮, and E. A spooky high G-to-G♯ lead, as a blue note–follows, then all those chords again, followed by a high trill of D and E.

The scary, evil sound of riffs like these–of a sort also heard in “Electric Funeral” and “Hand of Doom”–were consciously made as such, for Sabbath were trying to make the rock-and-roll equivalent of horror movie music: this is the basic formula for what would be called ‘heavy metal.’

Originally, the band had called themselves ‘The Polka Tulk Blues Band’ and ‘Earth,’ and they were playing a kind of blues/pop music. Then one day, Geezer had noticed a lineup of people waiting to see a horror movie, and he noted that people are willing to pay a lot to see scary movies. The movie in question was a re-release of 1963’s Black Sabbath, directed by Mario Bava; so the band changed their name to that, and started focusing on writing ‘scary’ songs, such as the eponymous first track of their debut album, with the main riff featuring the evil-sounding tritone interval, known as the ‘diabolus in musica.’

To get back to ‘War Pigs,’ we come to a very important and political verse that is so memorable and even more relevant today than ever. Politicians (and the capitalists they serve, of course) may have started the wars, but it’s the poor who always have to do all the fighting and dying. In the next verse, we hear that people are treated “just like pawns in chess.”

This is all true not just of the Vietnam vets who felt screwed by the American government back in the 1970s, but also those of the Iraq war, many of whom regretted their service in killing people based on government and media lies about “WMDs.” Many Americans join the military out of sheer desperation to find work in a country that threw the working class overboard as soon as there was no longer a danger to the capitalist class of socialist revolution (i.e., the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the end of 1991).

Not only have American troops been treated “just like pawns in chess,” but so also have the troops of people in other countries. Consider young Ukrainian men being forced to fight a war that, contrary to popular belief (as a result of mainstream Western media lies), was not merely Russian aggression, but has always been a proxy war from the US and NATO that had provoked Russia for eight years, from the 2014 coup d’état that removed democratically-elected Viktor Yanukovych from power and replaced his government with one that included Neo-Nazis who attacked ethnic Russians in the Donbass until Putin, realizing that attempts to bring about a diplomatic solution weren’t working, felt he had no choice but to intervene. The US/NATO proxy war is all part of a geopolitical chess game meant to weaken Russia to ensure the continuation of US/NATO global hegemony. Hence, Ukrainian boys, the pawns in that chess game, die to satisfy the anti-Russian ambitions of the US/NATO.

…but I digress. Back to the song.

After the end of the verse with “Wait ’til their judgement day comes” (whose significance I’ll get to in a minute), we hear a repeat of the D-E, G, F♯, F♮, E chords (interrupted, of course, with Ward banging on the drums). Then Iommi goes into a solo, starting and ending it with notes highlighting the suspension 4th and major 3rd, the middle of the solo being blues licks. Next is the going back and forth heard in the intro of E to D chords, and back to the D-E and hi-hat.

In the final verse, Ozzy sings abut the war pigs finally getting their comeuppance. The thing is, though, that it comes in the form of divine retribution, rather than, say, that of the ICC, or the Nuremberg Trials. It’s assumed that justice will be achieved through the spirit, rather than through realistic, human action, as if we people are too weak to do anything about injustice.

Using religion as the final arbiter of justice is a form of philosophical idealism, which says that thoughts, ideas, the spirit, etc., come first, and that physical reality proceeds from them. Philosophical materialism, on the other hand, reverses the order, placing physical reality first, and having thoughts, ideas, etc., proceed from the physical (i.e., our thoughts and ideas proceed from a physical, biological apparatus called the brain).

Many of us today feel that this latter philosophy is far more realistic and useful for solving the problems of our world. Lamenting the wars and injustices of the world, while waiting for “God” to repair all the wrongs will probably involve a rather long wait, to put it mildly.

The idea of God judging the sinning war pigs, throwing them all in the Lake of Fire, and with “Satan laughing, spreads his wings,” sounds more like a form of ghoulish entertainment than a wish for real justice. Such a trivializing of the ethical problem of warmongering can lead to the kind of backsliding into liberalism that Ozzy did by the 2000s (under the influence of his wife, Sharon, no doubt) when he was defending Zionism, even when the IDF war pigs began murdering the people of Gaza in a particularly shocking way in recent years (as of the publication of this article).

After a refrain of the D-E, G, F♯, F♮, E chords, we come to an instrumental outro called “Luke’s Wall,” named in honour of two men in the band’s road crew, Geoff “Luke” Lucas, and Spock Wall. Sabbath also added the title to inflate the song count for the US release of Paranoid, to get higher publishing royalties.

The outro opens with Iommi playing, still in E, high notes of E-B, E-D (minor 7th above), E-B, E-D, B-D, then power chords in E, B, and D. He repeats those high notes (otherwise described as root–fifth, root-7th [2x], fifth, 7th), then power chords of E, G, and E. He plays those high notes again in E, then brings them down, with parallel intervals, to D, then to C, and he plays chords of B, C-C, B.

Then he plays a mournful lead in E, which goes into a brief solo, and he returns to those high notes of the beginning of “Luke’s Wall.” The outro ends with a speeding up of the tape.

III: Paranoid

This song was an afterthought. In fact, the album was originally supposed to be called War Pigs (The album’s cover, with a picture of a man rushing at us with a sword and shield, is supposed to be a “war pig,” not a man with delusions of persecution; but with the change of the name of the album, they never bothered to change the picture accordingly).

It was felt that the album didn’t have enough material, so this short song was thrown together very quickly to fill in about three minutes. A cursory reading of the lyric already reveals that the song is not about a man who thinks everyone is out to get him, but rather, about (Geezer’s) depression.

The song begins with an Iommi riff in E, him quickly hammering on from D to E chords (by ‘chords,’ I mean power chords, the standard rock/heavy metal practice of playing the root and fifth simultaneously, rather than full triads–i.e., no thirds, hence, I don’t bother saying if they’re major or minor chords), then he plays single notes of A-B, D-E (2x).

Most of the rest of the song musically is made up of chords in E, D (G-D), and E. On two occasions, you’ll hear E, C, D, E (2x). Iommi’s guitar solo is a dry signal on the left channel, which is patched through a ring modulator and routed to the right channel.

There really isn’t much point in going into the lyric in much detail; it’s pretty straightforward–as I said above, it’s just about Geezer being disconsolately unhappy, to the point of feeling as if he’s going crazy. This ‘feeling of going crazy’ is the closest the lyric ever gets to him being “paranoid.”

The notion of being depressed as a form of mental illness, does, however, tie in with the album’s general themes of war, drug abuse, anger, hatred, and vengefulness. Paranoid is an album about, essentially, everything that’s wrong with the world, and a sense of paranoia is surely a big part of such problems.

IV: Planet Caravan

And now, we have a mellow, psychedelic song to contrast with all of the heavy metal coming before and after it. Now, instead of power chords in E and D, we have gentle, lyrically played chords in E minor and D major. Ward plays congas, and Iommi adds some flute, overdubbed to the reversed multitrack master which was then re-forwarded and treated with stereo delay.

Tom Allom, the engineer for the album, added some piano chords towards the end of the song. Ozzy’s voice was put through a Leslie speaker to achieve the treble and vibration effects.

The lyric is about floating through the universe with one’s lover, according to Geezer. I can’t help thinking, though, that given the psychedelic nature of the song, that it’s also about enjoying a nice, mellow high after smoking some grass. Such an interpretation would tie in well with the general themes of the album, which as I mentioned above, include drug use.

As far as Geezer’s lyrics go, this is one of his particularly beautiful, poetic achievements, rich in imagery, simile, metaphor, and personification (take, for example, the line “Stars shine like eyes, the black night sighs.”). The words flow musically and gently–they’re a true delight.

After Ozzy’s singing, we hear a fittingly lyrical, even jazzy, solo by Iommi. Though his solo has been compared to those of Django Reinhardt, I don’t really hear the comparison. It is worthy to point out, all the same, that Iommi suffered an injury to two of the fingers of his fretting hand, reminding us of how Reinhardt had damaged two fingers of his fretting hand in a fire. Both guitarists managed to get around their handicaps quite admirably: in Iommi’s case (inspired by Django’s example of not giving up on the guitar), he coped by drop-tuning his guitar and playing more power chords, partly to make playing easier, but also resulting in his signature ‘heavy’ and ‘dark’ sound, so loved of metal fans.

V: Iron Man

Ward begins the song with the thumping of his bass drum, then Iommi plays a dissonant bending of a low E note against another bent E note. Ozzy, in a distorted-sounding voice that apparently was achieved by speaking behind a metal fan, says, “I am Iron Man.” Then comes in the iconic guitar riff: power chords of B, D, D-E-E, G-F♯ (3x), D, D-E-E.

As Ozzy sings the verses, in the same melody as the riff, Iommi is playing it in single tones rather than with power chords. “Iron Man,” of course, is not the Marvel Comics superhero: his actual body was turned into metal as a result of time travel “in the great magnetic field,” for the purpose of warning humanity of an apocalyptic future.

His return to the present time in his iron form has only caused people to gawk at him and wonder how he changed into such a monstrous creature. They regard him with disgust and contempt: “Why should [they] even care?” This is humanity: judging people solely by their physical appearance.

Geezer has said that he meant “Iron Man” as an allegory for Christ, who also tried to save mankind, but was treated with similar contempt and killed. Instead of saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34), though, Iron Man wants revenge against those who rejected him, making himself the very dreaded future he meant to warn us all against.

After the first two verses, in which Ozzy has sung of the people’s contemptuous reaction to Iron Man, Iommi plays an ominous riff of single tones of B-B, D, B, B♭, A-A-A, E, A♭-A-A-B♭(3x, but without the last five notes the third time). Then we go back to the main riff with the power chords.

Ozzy sings the third verse, of how Iron Man’s body “turned to steel…when he traveled time.” After that, during the verse where Ozzy sings of nobody wanting the Iron Man, Iommi plays power chords in E, then D, then single notes of B, B, B-D-E, E-F-F♯, A-A♯-B (2x). This music is all heard twice, then back to the main riff.

The next verse is about Iron Man beginning his act of revenge. The verse after that is musically the same as, and lyrically parallel to, the one discussed in the middle and end of the previous paragraph.

Next comes an instrumental break, at double the tempo, in C♯, with Iommi playing single notes of C♯-B, G♯, G♮, G♭, E, B-B (hammered-on) C♯-C♯ (we hear this all twice). Then, Iommi plays a solo, then a repeat of the riff just described.

Then we hear a return to the single-note riff of B, B, B-D-E, E-F-F♯, A-A♯-B (4x), and a return to the main riff. In the final verse, Ozzy sings of Iron Man’s terrifying revenge, the people “running as fast as they can.”

If Iron Man is allegorical of Christ, then “Iron Man lives again” could be heard as a fusion of the Resurrection and the Second Coming, bringing on the Day of Judgement. Then we hear a return to B-B, D, B, B♭, A-A-A,…etc. Another way to see Iron Man’s revenge as relevant to today’s world is to think of how many times leftists have warned people about the consequences of embracing unbridled capitalism, or the “free market,” which has resulted not in economic prosperity, as the market fundamentalists fantasize it would, but rather the very neoliberal, totalitarian society that those right-wingers fear of communism. Ordinary people now are taking their revenge in the forms of burning down warehouses, throwing Molotov cocktails at Sam Altman‘s home, shooting insurance company billioaires, etc.

Next comes the coda: fast E notes on Geezer’s bass while Ward is thumping with him on the bass drum and playing the hi-hat, then hitting the tom-toms. Iommi repeats that dissonant bending of the low E note, then he plays a doom-laden single-note theme of E-D-E, (hammered-on) D-E-D (pulled-off), E-D-E, F♯ G F♯ G F♯ (grace note>>>) G-F♯ D (2x). He does overdubbed solos briefly, then returns to the theme (which always has Geezer backing him up with bass notes of mostly Es, Ds, C♯s, and Cs. The song ends with an emphatic E-D-E.

VI: Electric Funeral

This song is yet again in E minor, as were the previous three (“War Pigs” was an ambiguous, blue-note E major/minor). Iommi is playing the opening riff with a wah-wah pedal: E, E, B-C-B, E, F♯-G-F♯. The tempo is plodding and mournful.

When Ozzy comes in singing, he sings the same menacing melody as the backing guitar and bass riff: E, E, B…B♭…A-G… The song is about a nuclear holocaust. The first verse, with ominous imagery of the dangers coming from the sky (the dropping of an atomic bomb, of course), is comparable to the narrative I created around Krzysztof Penderecki‘s music when I wrote my analysis of his terrifying avant-garde composition, Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima.

The first two lines of the second verse, about how people who blindly follow orders like robots, who obey without thinking, will lead us all to our deaths in a nuclear war. These lines are particularly relevant today, when people mindlessly believe Western media propaganda that insists, “Russia bad! China bad!”, yet never consider that the purpose of such agitprop is to manufacture consent for war with those two nuclear-armed countries, as against the one nuclear-armed country that has actually used nukes to kill people.

This isn’t about believing that the Russian and Chinese governments are flawless or utterly blameless. To be sure, there’s plenty of room for criticism of both where applicable and appropriate. The point is that we should not be demonizing them to the point of antagonizing them and playing dangerous games of nuclear brinksmanship. Such dangers are what “Electric Funeral” is all about. We don’t want to be “victims of man’s frustration” over the reality that the US isn’t going to be the strongest country in the world anymore, and that the BRICS nations are on the rise. In fact, if handled well, this emerging multipolarity, with its new balance of power, could lead to world peace.

After the second verse, we come to an instrumental break. With an open low E-string, Iommi plays descending pairings of notes in E-G♯, E♭-G♮, D-G♭(5x). Next, he plays a riff, at double speed, of power chords of E-D-E, then a high chord of E minor up on the twelfth fret. Geezer backs him up on the bass with E-D-E, G, G-G, G.

Ozzy sings, doubling a melody of leads Iommi plays, of the violent effects of an atomic bomb destroying a city. The horrors turn surreal with imagery like “rivers turn to wood; ice melts into blood.” When I first heard this line as a teen, I thought it absurdly sensationalistic, but a possible interpretation of the first half of it is an allusion to Revelation 8:10-11, in which a star, named Wormwood, falls on a third of the rivers, turning them bitter and killing many people. Similarly, in Revelation 8:8, “the third part of the sea became blood.”

This fast section of the song ends with Ozzy chanting “Electric funeral” in E, while Iommi bends a high D-note up to E for Ozzy’s every syllable. Then Iommi plays a lower lead of Ds and E, leading back to the original, plodding riff with the wah-wah pedal.

The final verse is, as with the ending of “War Pigs” a reference to the Final Judgement. God is “the electric eye/Supernatural king.” The evils ones of the world will go to hell, as will the war pigs.

After a repeat of the original wah-wah riff, the song ends with more of that menacing theme on the guitar and bass: E, E, B…B♭…A-G. The song fades out ominously with that, ending not with a bang, but a whimper.

VII: Hand of Doom

The song begins with an eerie bass line in D: C-C-D-D-D, D, D-D-G, G♯, A. Then Ward and Iommi join Geezer, and Ozzy begins singing.

The song is about drug addiction, specifically intravenous drug abuse, such as IV heroin, as used by traumatized veterans of the Vietnam War, in a vain attempt to escape their pain.

Once the addictive habit has been established, “time’s caught up with you,” and “you know there’s no return.” What up to now has been a soft, ominous guitar doubling of that bass line described above is now loud and terrifying. “You join the other fools [who have become addicts]”, “Now [the addiction is] killing you.”

With the second verse is a return to the soft, ominous playing of the guitar/bass theme. Ozzy sings of the traumatic source of the need for the escape through drugs: “the bomb,” and “Vietnam napalm.” It’s all so “disillusioning” that “you [need to] push the needle in.”

A return to the loud and terrifying version of the riff comes with Ozzy singing of how, with the addict, “from life, you escape/Reality’s black drape.” After this verse, Geezer plays the eerie riff alone a few times, then all is spookily silent for a second.

Then we come to a whole new riff, in C, from Iommi. He plays roots, fifths, and octaves in triplets of C-G-C (4x), then chords of B♭, B♭-suspension 4th, and B♭-major.

Ozzy sings of what a fool the addict is to be overindulging in such a dangerous habit. In the second of these two new verses, he sings of the addict “drop[ping] the acid pill.” He won’t “stop to think now.”

It seems odd (if not outright hypocritical) for Ozzy to have sung, and Geezer to have written, a lyric that judges drug users, when we all know these four guys were far from innocent of the habit. As early as “Fairies Wear Boots,” Ozzy is freely admitting to “smoking and tripping.” Then there’s “Sweet Leaf” glorifying the smoking of marijuana, with Iommi opening the song by coughing after inhaling a joint. Then there’s Ozzy chanting “cocaine!” in “Snowblind,” and saying “Smokers…get high!” in “Killing Yourself to Live.” Finally, there’s Ozzy’s claim that he and Ward did acid every day (or almost every day, or sometimes once or twice a week) for two years back in the early 1970s, leading to Ozzy having a chat with a horse.

After the first of these verses is a return to the triplets of C-G-C, etc. During the verses, Iommi is playing power chords of C, E♭, D-B♭, F, C, B♭, C. After the second of these verses, Iommi plays power chords of C, E♭, F, G (3x).

Then, for the next verse, Iommi is playing a heavy riff with power chords of Cs and C♯-C♮, over and over again. Ozzy sings more of the addict’s delight in self-destruction.

After this verse and a repeat of that riff with the triplets, etc., Iommi does a solo in the Dorian mode. Then he plays a riff of three descending power chords of C, B♭, and G (2x), then there’s a return to the original, eerie bass riff in D.

In the next verse, Ozzy sings of the addict’s “skin…turning green,” symbolic of the physical and mental sickness growing in him, as the rest of the verse is just about the addict ignoring the damage he’s doing to himself and the painful reality around him he’s trying in vain to escape.

In the final verse, we sense how the extensive damage to the addict’s health is finally taking its toll on him. He falls, his body heaves, and he’s surely going to die.

After this, we just hear the bass playing the eerie theme all alone, just as alone as the dying addict is. The bass fades out quickly, as does the addict’s life.

VIII: Rat Salad

This track is an instrumental in G. One can hear it as Black Sabbath’s equivalent to Led Zeppelin’s “Moby Dick”: an instrumental, the second last track on Side Two of the band’s second album, and most importantly, it has a drum solo. The riffs are essentially made up of blues licks, as “Moby Dick” is essentially a blues instrumental, though here Iommi plays a solo in the Dorian mode again.

The main riff is, as I said above, made up of blues licks: G, A♯, C, C♯, C-C♯ grace note)-C, A♯, G (2x), etc.

IX: Fairies Wear Boots

This song, with a lyric by Ozzy, for a change, was inspired by an altercation the band had with a group of skinheads: not the white supremacist kind, but ones nasty enough to call the band “fairies” because of their “girlish” long hair.

Ozzy decided to get back at them with this song lyric by using the homophobic slur on them instead. The song opens with an instrumental intro called “Jack the Stripper,” named after the Hammersmith nude murders of 1964 and 1965. Iommi plays an opening riff in G minor with an echo effect, then it goes up to A minor.

After that, it goes up again to B minor, with Iommi playing octaves. Then he plays power chords of E, D, (and Ward bangs solo drum licks), B, and A (more solo drumming). This trading of power chords and solo drumming is repeated, then they go up to C♯, and Iommi does a solo with blues licks. Then there’s a repeat, twice again, of the E, D, B, and A power chords trading with the solo drum licks.

Finally, we come to the song’s main riff in a bluesy G minor. First, the riff is loud and aggressive, then it softens to leave space for Ozzy’s vocals. He begins his story about the skinheads, though the setting and circumstances seem quite different from the original source of the story. Instead of what was, depending on how the story’s told, an encounter with skinheads at either a Sabbath gig or a soccer game, Ozzy presents it as if it were a drug-induced hallucination. He’s walking home late at night and sees the “fairies” in boots dancing through a window inside a house. The boots are the strong ones a skinhead would wear.

Between the repeated chorus, in which Ozzy seems hysterical that no one would believe his bizarre vision, there’s a riff by Iommi with single notes of (more or less) F-G (hammered-on, 2x), C-D (hammered-on), F, D, and F bent up to G and back down (these an octave lower). Then he solos briefly, does the riff again, and plays the “Jack the Stripper” theme again before returning to the main riff of the song.

After Ozzy’s repeat of the chorus, he sings of going to the doctor for help, only to be told that his problem is doing too many drugs. Oddly, instead of producing a fourth line to rhyme with “far,” he just sings a long “Yeah!” (Easy rhymes for “far” could have been “are,” “bar,” “car,” “jar,” “star,” etc. Off the top of my head, I could rhyme it with a fourth line of “A crazy dope fiend is all you are.”)

Iommi repeats the riff described two paragraphs above, then ends the song with a repeated, higher-pitched riff of A, A♯, G, A♮, F, G…fading out.

X: Conclusion

Paranoid is an album fusing the themes of war, mental illness, escape through drugs, alienation, revenge, nuclear war, and self-destruction through drug abuse. The song “Paranoid” may be more about depression than actual paranoia, but the title for the album seems nonetheless apt, since all the aforementioned themes have a way of fuelling paranoia in people, in one way or another.