Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
| Robert Christgau | C− |
| Q | |
| Rolling Stone | mixed |
| The Rolling Stone Album Guide | |
| Sputnikmusic | 4.0/5 |
The album peaked at number 5 on the UK Albums Chart, and at number eight in the United States, where it achieved Gold status on advance orders alone. Eventually it sold two million copies in the US. However, it was not well received by contemporary music critics. Rolling Stone's Lester Bangs described Master of Reality as "monotonous" in a mixed review. Robert Christgau of The Village Voice found the band "dull and decadent" and called the album "a dim-witted, amoral exploitation."
In 2001, Q included the album in their list of the 50 Heaviest Albums of All Time, calling it "malevolent...casting Black Sabbath as a Titanic-style house band on the eve of Armageddon, cranking it as the bomb drops." A critic for the magazine cited it as "the most cohesive record of first three albums." In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked the album at number 298 in their list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. and called it "the definitive studio relic of Sabbath's golden-hellfire era (1970-74)..."
Read more about this topic: Master Of Reality
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