NEW BOOK: Black Sabbath's Master of Reality, by John Darnielle

Available and on sale now is volume number 56 in the series. The book is available from all the usual stores that carry the series, and from Amazon right here. In the meantime, here's the back cover copy:

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Imagine that you are a man from space! And you don't speak English and you never heard of weed, and you landed in California and the first person you met up with took you to his house and said "Hey check out this band." And then he played you "Sweet Leaf." In my opinion, the man from space would hear that song, just the crunchy guitar sound and those bass notes, Geezer Butler is the best bassist it sounds like his strings are made from lime jello salad, and he would start banging his head! Because the riff on "Sweet Leaf," that is something anybody could understand. ANYBODY.

Black Sabbath's Master of Reality has maintained remarkable historical status over several generations; it's a touchstone for the directionless, and common coin for young men and women who've felt excluded from the broader cultural economy. John Darnielle hears it through the ears of Roger Painter, a young adult locked in a southern California adolescent psychiatric center in 1985; deprived of his Walkman and hungry for comfort, he explains Black Sabbath as one might describe air to a fish, or love to an android, hoping to convince his captors to give him back his tapes.

John Darnielle was born in Bloomington, Indiana, and was raised by southern California. He sings, writes songs, and plays guitar for the Mountain Goats and writes South Pole Dispatch monthly for Decibel magazine. He lives with his wife in Durham, North Carolina.

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