Black Sabbath Announce The Vinyl Collection 1970 – 1978

Black Sabbath may have officially called it a day, but that doesn't mean their vinyl output is coming to an end: the band have just announced a new box set of their iconic early material arriving in September.

Sabbath's first eight albums – Black Sabbath, Paranoid, Master Of Reality, Vol. 4, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Sabotage, Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die! – are set to feature as part of The Vinyl Collection 1970 – 1978, which is due out on September 6 and limited to just 3,000 copies.

On top of that, it's also going to come with a new 7" of Evil Woman and Wicked World, plus a 12" Monomania compilation featuring a couple of rarities.

Here's Monomania's tracklist:

Side One

1. Evil Woman (Don’t Play Your Games With Me) (previously unreleased in North America)
2. Wicked World
3. The Wizard
4. Iron Man (edited version)

Side Two

1. Paranoid
2. Into The Void (edited version) (previously unreleased)
3. Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath (edited version)
4. It’s Alright
5. Radio Spot For Black Sabbath

Frontman Ozzy Osbourne recently reflected to Kerrang! on the impact of 1970's Paranoid single, and how he enjoyed being a pop star for that moment in time, “None of us set out to be pop stars or rock stars, but it was all an experience," he said. "Obviously we hoped we’d be successful, but we didn’t really want to be a regular Top Of The Pops band, we didn’t want to sell out to that point. That was never going to be our world. When Paranoid was in the charts alongside all these awful pop songs, you’d think, ‘How the fuck has this happened?’ We could have chosen to write pop songs, but we wanted to write music with a bit of grit and a bit of substance, rather than (sings) ‘I love you, you love me…’. All we ever wanted was to write music that we liked.”

When asked if he ever imagined that making music and being a professional singer would become his job for life, Ozzy responded: “I had no idea at all. I mean, before that, I’d no idea that Tony [Iommi] and Bill [Ward] would knock on my door when I placed that ‘Ozzy Zig Needs Gig’ ad in a shop, and I’d no idea that the three of us would end up making music with Geezer [Butler]. I don’t believe in many things, but I do believe in fate, and it was obviously meant to be. But there was certainly no plan involved. We just used to have fun in those days, have a laugh. We were on fucking fire for about five years, before all the business and lawyers and rip-offs dragged us down. I didn’t join a band to become an accountant or a lawyer.”

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