The BEST CD edition of this classic, April 7, 2009

The span between their debut album and Paranoid was not very long (a little less than a year) but the difference was huge. All the grinding, powerful riffs from their 1st album had been refined and tightened and the legend that was Blak Sabbath became solidified here on their classic sophomore effort. Paranoid has so many truly great Sabbath classics that even the lesser tunes here are overshadowed by their greatness, erasing the few spots of mediocrity. Originally to be titled War Pigs (hence the pink guy on the cover wth the sword and shield)this is the epoch of hard, dark, killer rock. Moving forward from here Sabbath would never fully capture the greatness of Paranoid. If there ever was a must-have heavy metal album, this is it! I grew up listening to this as a kid in the early 70s and I gotta tel ya, these songs are imprinted in my soul!War Pigs/Luke's Wall - Orginally titled Walpurgis(The Witches Sabbath) with completely different lyrics (hear the original on...

1. Some are reporting that the Quad mix is muddy and are giving this release low points because of it. First of all, the quad mix is not just the album put in 4.0. This was an entirely new mix done in 1974 (using alternate guitar, bass and drum parts) when the album was given a more psychedelic sound by the original engineers. The only change made to it was to put it from 4.0 to 5.1 adding subwoofer and center channel to the mix, and it's amazing to hear! While it's a softer sound than the original album, it does not sound muddy on my equipment at all (I'm playing it on a Denon DVD-2910 and Denon AVR 1909 -- so nothing crazy high-end in terms of the equipment), in fact it sounds wild! (Make sure you choose 5.1 from the screen menu b/c there's a standard 2.0 mix for those who don't have a home-theater set-up).2. Of the original album itself this is the single best remaster job bar none. The original CDs are terribly muddy. The Rhino remasters are a joke of overcompression...

Rejoice, people - this is truly the exception from the "rule" that new remasters are worse than the older CD editions! This is probably THE BEST sounding "Paranoid" CD.It's definitly better than 1996 Castle CD and 2004 Black Box release (don't believe what J. Siegler says). There are some other CD editions which I have never (or a long time ago) listened to, but I don't think they are better.And there's edition which I own for some time, 2001 Sanctuary "mini vinyl replicas" 8-disc box-set.This new 2009 edition is released on the same label - Sanctuary. I must say that guys there know their job. So - congratulations and respect to Sanctuary!After detailed analysis it seems to me that they used the same source as in 2001, but remastered it in a different way. Both 2001 and 2009 editions have loudness boosting just very slightly over the edge, basically unnoticeable, which makes them incomparably better than most of today's releases with ridiculously...