Electric Funeral

"Electric Funeral" is the fifth song from Black Sabbath's second album Paranoid, released in 1970. The song deals with nuclear war and its aftermath. While thematically similar to "War Pigs", the song lyrics are even darker, describing a nightmarish post-apocalyptic wasteland of irradiated, sub-human mutants living in a miserable, synthetic garden in constant and utter terror of nuclear fallout; a fact complemented by an eerie main riff. The song did not appear in the live set until 1976, and then was not played again until the Reunion Tour. Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi explains that the band would often play any given song in many different ways, but once they recorded a version in the studio,any quirks and oddities of the recording dictated how they played it from then on. In his book Iron Man: My Journey through Heaven and Hell with Black Sabbath, Iommi writes, When we recorded "Electric Funeral"... Bill would play it differently every bloody time. He didn't know how many times to come in, and at certain parts he plays three instead of four. we kept the three. And to this day we still play it that way. The song has been written in the key of E Minor.
Cover Versions
The song was covered by:
*Pantera on the tribute album,
*Soulfly,
*power metal band Iced Earth on their Melancholy EP
*death metal band Brutality on their album When the Sky Turns Black
*doom metal band Electric Wizard on their compilation album Pre-Electric Wizard 1989-1994.
*Beavis and Butt-head also do an air guitar imitation of the song riff in many of their episodes.
*It is part of Candlemass' "Black Sabbath Medley", which originally appeared on the Ancient Dreams album and has been a staple of the band's live set since.
*Cavalera Conspiracy for a tribute CD issued by UK metal magazine Metal Hammer. The song had also been covered by the Serbian doom metal band Svarog in 1995.
Personnel
*Ozzy Osbourne - vocals
*Tony Iommi - lead guitar
*Geezer Butler - bass guitar
*Bill Ward - drums

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