Sabotage

Sabotage was the band's sixth studio album, released in the United States on 28 July 1975 and in Britain in September. It was recorded from February 1975 at Morgan Studios in Willesden, London, while the band were being sued by their former manager Patrick Meehan. Iommi said they felt sabotaged all the way along the line, Ward said it was probably the only album made with lawyers in the studio, and Osbourne wrote that writs were being delivered to the mixing desk. Iommi and Mike Butcher produced, and Iommi said the band wanted to make a rock album rather than carry on with orchestras. Osbourne joked that it took about four thousand years.

The English Chamber Choir sang on Supertzar, and Osbourne thought he had come to the wrong studio when he saw them. The (Radio) in Am I Going Insane (Radio) is a reference to the rhyming slang radio rental, meaning mental, and not a radio edit. Don't Start (Too Late) is an acoustic instrumental by Iommi, titled for tape operator David Harris. The Writ is one of the few Sabbath songs with lyrics by Osbourne, and it attacks Meehan. A 31-second skit by Osbourne and Ward, Blow on a Jug, is hidden at the end. The closing section of Symptom of the Universe grew from a studio improvisation made in a single day.

The sleeve idea came from Graham Wright, Ward's drum tech, and Ward wore his wife's red tights for the photograph. The album reached number 7 in Britain and number 28 in the United States, and was the first Sabbath record not to reach Platinum in the US. It went Gold there on 16 June 1997. Rolling Stone said on release that it was not only their best record since Paranoid but might be their best ever, and placed it 32nd in its 2017 list of metal albums. Chuck Eddy ranked it 20th in his 1991 book of heavy metal albums and called it the band's best and most eccentric.

On the American tour the band filmed Don Kirshner's Rock Concert at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, and used a full-time keyboardist, Gerald Woodroffe, on stage for the first time. Kiss opened the dates, which were cut short in November 1975 when Osbourne was injured in a motorcycle accident. A 2021 Super Deluxe edition includes a live recording from 5 August 1975 at the Convention Hall in Asbury Park, New Jersey.