Add Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” to Your Heavy Metal Playlist
It would also make the cut for great anti-Vietnam War songs
If paying close attention to Mad Men, in the later seasons, you heard Stan Rizzo, the Art Director, tell his soon-to-be-love-of-his-life, Peggy Olson, about this new band with a heavy new sound.
It was Black Sabbath.
Mad Men, like Forrest Gump, relies so much on music to tell America’s story. The characters develop with the changes in society. Music, like fashion, reveals these changes the best. As Rizzo says this, I check my Internal Rolodex of Music History.
1968. Birmingham, England. Pioneers of heavy metal. Released self-titled debut in 1970, after Led Zeppelin I and II, but in many ways, more metallic and darker than Zeppelin.
If I recall correctly, Peggy and Stan are at a party, and Stan refers to the song, Black Sabbath: truly gothic, and so not The Summer of Love.
And that anecdote leads me to Sabbath’s second album, Paranoid (1970). Now we generally do not relate Sabbath with Creedence Clearwater and Country Joe and the Fish with anti-war songs, but “War Pigs” is a gem: anti-war, anti-politicians, heavy with social commentary, dark, gothic, and a complete jam at almost eight minutes.
In the film, This Is The End, “War Pigs” is used for comedic, ironic effect.
“The movie is certainly worth a watch, if for nothing else than the few moments Sabbath makes an appearance.
The most famous of which is certainly ‘War Pigs’, which plays out as the group try to board up James Franco’s house” (Jack Whatley).
In Metal Lords II, there is a better scene where two friends try to form a heavy metal band with a cellist for a Battle of the Bands. “War Pigs” inspires Kevin (Jaeden Martell) to try his chops on the kit.
What “Paranoid” is for master guitar riffs, “War Pigs” is for epic air drums. Does drummer Bill Ward get enough credit? The live versions of the song truly show the Beast — like “Animal” from The Muppets.
Watching that scene makes you want to purchase a Pearl kit — and then watch Jack Black with his Ozzy impression on The Tonight Show.
Most casual Sabbath fans mostly know “Iron Man” and “Paranoid.” For good reason, but like my daughter’s boyfriend, Brian, I also think “War Pigs” is Sabbath’s best song.
But “Paranoid” is easier — and shorter — to play on Guitar Hero.
One YouTube commentator said: “Funny how a band that was accused of being evil wrote the best anti-war song ever made.”
Another wrote: “I don’t always listen to Black Sabbath, but when I do, so do the neighbors.”
So true.
Okay — finally. Let’s examine the song. The opening, like “Iron Man,” is full of foreboding and hellish soundscapes — with sirens wailing — for a full tortured minute.
Notice how Sabbath uses dark imagery, a Sabbath Signature, to equate generals with witches. Have generals and politicians caused more death and destruction than witches and sorcerers? Mass is used twice as the same “lazy” rhyme — but not really lazy. Mass has two meanings — a mass like a religious mass and also as “bulk” — as in “mass of men.”
We’re talking many generals.
“Generals gathered in their masses Just like witches at black masses Evil minds that plot destruction Sorcerer of death’s construction.”
One only needs to be a casual observer of war films to understand the 2nd verse:
“In the fields, the bodies burning As the war machine keeps turning Death and hatred to mankind Poisoning their brainwashed minds Oh lord, yeah!”
Major corporations make mad money with these war machines. Wasn’t it such production that brought Germany out of runaway inflation and unemployment in the 1930s? Wasn’t it the war effort that ended the Great Depression, and not Roosevelt’s alphabet soup federal spending?
Listen to the War Hawks. Listen to the speeches from Hitler — and tyrants even today — (Putin) — and you can hear the poisoning and the brainwashing. Orwell knows it: War is Peace.
“Politicians hide themselves away They only started the war Why should they go out to fight? They leave that role to the poor, yeah.”
Did Mr. Bonespurs fight? Bubba Clinton? George W. Bush? Do we see Putin leading as a tank commander in Ukraine? Where are they? And who were those who died in Vietnam? Were the ones in college? And in The American Civil War? The ones who couldn’t pay for a replacement? Was it the wealthy?
“Time will tell on their power minds Making war just for fun Treating people just like pawns in chess Wait till their judgement day comes, yeah!”
The chess analogy is cliche but apt, of course. Like when Grace Slick of The Jefferson Airplane sings in “White Rabbit,” about men telling you where you go on the chessboard, like in Alice in Wonderland.
What would God think of their actions? Will they have their Day of Judgement? Why is war so much fun for people — for these madmen, despots, and generals?
As the band XTC sings, “Majors and generals are only happy when they got a war.”
“Now in darkness, world stops turning Ashes where their bodies burning No more war pigs have the power Hand of God has struck the hour.”
The song ends like Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. Utter destruction. The world has stopped moving. God has struck — as if the whole of humanity has been smitten. Do the War Pigs have power anymore?
Power of what? Over whom? Can one have power over ash and burning bodies?
“Day of judgement, God is calling On their knees, the war pigs crawling Begging mercy for their sins Satan laughing, spreads his wings Oh lord, yeah!”
For a band so closely associated with evil, it seems as if Black Sabbath are messengers of God — like a modern Gabriel — or a Cassandra — warning us of the truly horrendous results that may be in store if we give over our power and our lives to the War Pigs.
Who will be the last one laughing? Yeah — Satan. “My work on Earth is done, oh Lord.” What an irony! As if God and Satan, as in the Book of Job, are working in concert.
Then Satan wipes his hands of all of us — “what fools these mortals be.”
What a song. Eight minutes of pure angst and anger. What a chaotic time. But chaos never ends — and this song, sadly, will usually always be relevant.