Black Sabbath: Ozzy Osbourne (vocals); Tony Iommi (guitar); Terry "Geezer" Butler (bass); Bill Ward (drums).

Producers: Rodger Bain, Patrick Meehan, Black Sabbath, Mike Butcher.

Recorded between 1972 & 1978. Includes liner notes by Chris Welch and Brian Ives Tim Scanlin.

Although Ozzy Osbourne has had a huge cultural impact as both a solo artist and an unlikely TV star, his true legacy lies in the eight albums he recorded with Black Sabbath between 1970 and 1978. Though musical performers in various genres regularly conjured up images of evil (most notably the Rolling Stones on "Sympathy for the Devil"), no act ever actually sounded consistently evil until Sabbath's self-titled first record. The British quartet's sound arrived fully formed, with Tony Iommi's crushing guitar riffs, Geezer Butler's ominous bass lines, and Bill Ward's almost-tribal drumming perfectly complementing Osbourne's haunting vocals.

This gorgeously morbid, pitch-black box set chronicles Sabbath's development, including early-'70s tracks such as the doom-laden "Black Sabbath," the powerful anti-military song "War Pigs," and the fierce "Supernaut," all included on one of the group's indisputably influential first four albums. Even though the latter half of the set doesn't always rival the brilliance found on the former, the BLACK BOX, as a whole, reveals a formidable musical force that shaped the entire genre of heavy metal and permanently altered the landscape of rock & roll.