Black Sabbath
The Vinyl Collection 1970-1978

Listening notes

Released by Universal UMC in 2012 under catalog number 3715308, The Vinyl Collection 1970-1978 is a ten-piece box set compiling Black Sabbath's studio output across the band's first eight years on record, alongside two additional releases that round out the package's scope.

The set spans eight studio albums: Black Sabbath and Paranoid, both from 1970, followed by Master of Reality (1971), Vol 4 (1972), Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973), Sabotage (1975), Technical Ecstasy (1976), and Never Say Die! (1978). Each album occupies a dedicated double-sided vinyl disc and is presented with its original tracklist intact. Notably, the box also includes Live At Last, the 1980 live album recorded during the band's earlier touring years, spread across sides Q and R. A seventh-inch single rounds out the collection, pressing the 1970 recording of "Evil Woman" on side S and "Wicked World" on side T.

The genres listed for the set are Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, and Rock, reflecting the breadth of stylistic territory Black Sabbath covered across the period in question. Individual track durations are documented throughout. Among the longer pieces represented are "Warning" at 10:33, "Megalomania" at 9:43, "The Writ" at 8:43, and "Wheels of Confusion" at 8:03. The live version of "Wicked World" on the Live At Last disc runs 18:31, the single longest entry in the collection by a considerable margin.

In total the box set accounts for ten vinyl records, including the seven-inch single, making it a substantial physical artifact for anyone cataloguing this portion of the band's discography. Human fact-checker should verify disc count, single-sided or double-sided configuration of the seven-inch, and whether Live At Last falls within the stated 1970-1978 scope implied by the title.