Black Sabbath-Volume 1: 1970-1978 (1992)

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General		Extras
Category	Documentary	Menu Animation & Audio Interviews-Cast-Tony Iommi; Bill Ward Featurette-Band History (10) Discography
Rating
Year Of Production	1992
Running Time	64:29 (Case: 85)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Martin Baker
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Ozzy Osbourne Tony Iommi Geezer Butler Bill Ward
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$34.95	Music	Black Sabbath

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.33:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    One of the inherent problems with a documentary called The Black Sabbath Story is that the story in question, like any that the moneymen of the record industry would like to twist in order to suit their purposes, gets distorted according to whomever is telling it. Ask a dedicated fan like myself, and then ask a "journalist" like Hugh Gilmour about the story of Black Sabbath, and you will get two very different answers. In order to illustrate that point, it is necessary for me to provide a quote from the liner notes of the restored CD edition of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath:

    "Killing Yourself To Live, an embryonic version of which had been previewed on the Vol. 4 tour, could quite easily have been penned by Kurt Cobain..."

    ...which is kind of in the same ball park as saying that the score from the Battle Of Endor could have been composed by Ronnie James Dio. It might get a positive response from fanboys who value trendiness over truth, but it just doesn't have any bearing in the real world, and it goes a long way to utterly destroy the credibility of the person who wrote it. This, in a nutshell, is the big problem with telling the true story of Black Sabbath - whereas Columbia Records would like you to believe that the title of the fourth song from their self-titled debut stands for Nativity In Black (uh huh), the reality is that it was a joke about the fact that drummer Bill Ward's beard at that time looked like a pen nib. Hence, N.I.B. - a culturally relevant joke that less and less members of the audience will understand as time goes on, but one that serves as a good history lesson. And they say that doomy music can't be educational (although the "they" in this case can't seem to get it through their heads that their Warrants and Ratts are about as close to the real thing as Pepsi is to Jack Daniels).

    Those who already know the band and their music will have a rough idea in their heads about their history, so it is pretty redundant to describe how they came to be. While this documentary covers the origins of the band in a superficial manner, it is more focused upon the music they made, which has in turn made them one of, if not the, most influential contemporary bands of the twentieth century. Unlike a lot of other documentaries and compilations, The Black Sabbath Story, Volume 1 even covers the last two albums the band made with Ozzy Osbourne as their vocalist - Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die. Seeing Bill Ward doing the vocals for It's Alright, a number so pedestrian and Top 40 that Ozzy actually refused to have anything to do with it, is quite a creepy thing given what Sabbath are so famous for.

    In fact, videos such as Symptom Of The Universe at 38:56 highlight the reason why Black Sabbath were dead and buried when Ozzy left - have a look at the stage positions of Ozzy and Tony, and you will see what I mean.

Video

    The Black Sabbath Story, Volume 1 is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, and it is 16x9 Enhanced. To slightly misquote Alexei Sayle, I may be stupid-like, but I happen to know for a fact that this documentary was shot in the standard 1.33:1 ratio of the day, and that none of this footage, some of which is now as old as thirty-two years, was intended to be seen any other way. To say that this is disappointing is an understatement - it is the same stupidity that tries to justify the cropping of widescreen films into 1.33:1 in action, but in reverse. Normally, I would be inclined to say something like "ha ha, tough luck, 'full screen' lovers", but this footage was so clearly not meant to be in a widescreen ratio it's frustrating. Several album covers shown during the documentary, such as Sabbath Bloody Sabbath at 34:17, are so badly chopped it is a crime - this is a beautiful album cover in its full glory.

    Not only is this transfer in the wrong aspect ratio, it qualifies as one of the worst I have ever seen of any Sabbath-related material.

    The transfer can be divided into two segments - the historical and the contemporary footage. Sharpness during the historical footage is highly variable, but usually quite fuzzy and indistinct, while the shadow detail tends to be crushed, and some noise is occasionally evident. The contemporary footage, which is basically a broken-up interview with Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler, actually fares a lot worse in this regard, although it is much sharper and cleaner.

    The colours vary from being functionally saturated during the contemporary footage to washed out and often smeared during the historical footage. No dot crawl or composite artefacting was noted, however.

    MPEG artefacts are a real problem in this transfer. While the grain that appears during the historical footage can be considered inherent in the source material, the contemporary interview footage, taken some time in 1991 or 1992, is constantly on the verge of pixelization. At 51:39, the slight curves in Tony Iommi's face, particularly his eyes, are so jagged and unnatural-looking that I honestly preferred the noise-addled VHS version I wore out from overuse. Film-to-video artefacts were occasionally present in the form of shimmer in guitar strings, as were film artefacts in copious amounts during the historical footage. The latter is to be expected, however - we are lucky that this source material still exists.

    There are no subtitles recorded on this DVD. They are, frankly, unnecessary, and I doubt that hearing impaired viewers will have an interest in this band.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    As one would rightly expect of a Black Sabbath DVD, there is a Dolby Digital 5.1 remix designed to put the viewer right in the middle of the performances that are presented here. Purists need not worry, however, as there is also a Dolby Digital 2.0 mix for those who want to experience the DVD in the same way that the crummy VHS tape was presented.

    Two soundtracks adorn this DVD, both of which are representations of the original English dialogue - a Dolby Digital 2.0, 224 kilobit per second mix, and a Dolby Digital 5.1, 448 kilobit per second mix. Unfortunately, the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack sounds little different to the Dolby Digital 2.0 default - as a matter of fact, I preferred listening to the 2.0 mix anyway.

    The dialogue during the interviews is very clear and easy to understand - both Tony and Geezer have very strong voices that tend to cut through all but the most persistent of noise. Ozzy's vocals during the historical footage is a little more difficult, partly because he is singing at a faster speed than he does in the studio, but mostly because hearing him over the instruments is a tough ask.

    There are no real issues with audio sync here - Ozzy's attempts to lip-sync during the experimental video for Sabbath Bloody Sabbath are way out, but this is inherent to the source material. There are no other instances when lip movements are out of step with the music.

    Speaking of the music, well, since this whole DVD is focused upon the making of the music and the men who made it, it will suffice to state that it is Black Sabbath music (although I cannot confirm who wrote the demo material from 1968 and 1969 that we hear brief samples of).

    This is where the audio transfer undoes itself - the surround channel activity, or rather the complete lack thereof. Aside from moments when the rear channels come alive for small amounts of sampled thunder, this might as well be a 2.0 mix. Come to think of it, it might as well be a 1.0 mix, since the actual 2.0 mix on the disc sounds very much the same, or even better at some points. This is definitely not a good argument for multichannel mixes of Black Sabbath music.

    At 21:44, Children Of The Grave begins, and is played almost in its entirety. Those who know the most basic facts about Sabbath's music would expect their subwoofer to be turned into a steaming pile of goo as a result, right? Well, it barely registered a hum throughout the entire documentary, and its absence during numbers like this served to make it even more conspicuous than constant overemphasis ever could. Hell, the subwoofer should be overemphasised during a Sabbath song!

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    While I am on the subject of bad presentation, I am sure that I am not the only one who is utterly sick of seeing cover slicks with the printing so far left of centre that a significant portion of the title text wraps around to the back. It might be easy for someone in the printing department to ignore, but let me tell you something - in the hands of someone as obsessive about his music collection as I am, it is disastrous. All of the extras are presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 with 16x9 Enhancement and a choice between Dolby Digital 2.0 or 5.1 audio.

Menu

    The best thing I can say about this disc is that the menu is very nicely animated, featuring a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, and it is 16x9 Enhanced.

Cast Interviews - Tony Iommi (Guitarist); Bill Ward (Drummer)

    These two interviews, running two minutes and twenty five seconds for Tony and sixty-nine seconds for Bill, are brief snippets of answers to questions we never really hear. While any member of Sabbath can always say something interesting about anything, it would have been nice to see exactly what the hell they were asked.

Featurette - Sabbath History

    This twenty-one minute and twenty-seven second featurette, with its own little (often illegible) scene selection menu, features such people as Jim Simpson and Cozy Powell giving their opinion on Sabbath's history, rather than Sabbath's history itself. The only valid source for what is mentioned in this title is a member of the real Black Sabbath, end of story.

Discography

    Touted as an album gallery in the menu, this features snapshots of the album covers (with the contrast on the Master Of Reality album so poor one cannot make out the actual album title) with links to music from said albums that is featured in the documentary.

    Information about a Region 1 release is scant, but given that this is a music video, and they tend to have a way of being formatted the same right around the world, I am pained to say that you're better off not buying this title at all.

    There is a right way and a wrong way to present Black Sabbath. While the Sony Music Video DVDs don't do a credible job at all with the editing, they did at least get the compression and audio mixing right, which puts them well ahead of this effort. This is not the right way to present the greatest band of the twentieth century. As much as it pains me to do this, there is no place for this DVD on any Sabbath fan's shelves, and thus into the Hall Of Shame it goes on the basis of an extremely poor effort in both important transfer aspects. A real waste.

    The video transfer is poor, incorrectly framed, and just plain nasty.

    The audio transfer is an insult considering what other Sabbath-related DVDs have shown the combination to be capable of.

    The extras are just not that interesting.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall