So how loud was it inside the Record Plant - then located near the corner of 3rd Street and La Cienega Boulevard - as Black Sabbath recorded basic tracks, all in the same room, for Vol. 4, the only album the band’s original lineup ever recorded in Los Angeles?

“I think that question might be a little difficult for me because I’m on cans, on headphones, while we’re tracking. But I’m sure we played pretty fucking loud,” drummer Bill Ward tells LAWeekly with a laugh. “I would walk into the studio when Tony was doing his [guitar] overdubs and man, it’s just like holy fucking shit, really loud. And that’s just doing overdubs. Or Geezer. The [speaker] cabs are flying, man, there’s no doubt about it.”

After recording their first three brilliant, heavy-metal-pioneering albums in England, in spring 1972 Black Sabbath - Ward, guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler and singer Ozzy Osbourne - were living in a rented Bel-Air mansion while working on the follow-up to their 1971 disc, Master Of Reality.

This was the band’s most experimental music yet. The piano balladry of “Changes”. An orchestra on the haunting coke paean “Snowblind”. Cuban rhythmic influences on “Supernaut”, a track with such an infectious, powerful groove it “was one of John Bonham’s favorite songs, actually,” Ward says. And of course Sabbath’s hallmark mix of savage guitars, jazz-gone-wild rhythmic counterpoint and Osbourne’s eerie, melodic vocals.

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