Describes Master of Reality in the voice of a fifteen-year-old boy being held in an adolescent psychiatric centre in southern California in 1985.

Black Sabbath's Master of Reality has maintained remarkable historical status over several generations; it's a touchstone for the directionless, and common coin for young men and women who've felt excluded from the broader cultural economy. John Darnielle hears it through the ears of Roger Painter, a young adult locked in a southern California adolescent psychiatric center in 1985; deprived of his Walkman and hungry for comfort, he explains Black Sabbath as one might describe air to a fish, or love to an android, hoping to convince his captors to give him back his tapes.

There are several 33 1/3 titles that mix fiction and criticism, with varying degrees of success. Of them, John Darnielle's novella about Master of Reality may be the best. Drawing on his experience as a psychiatric nurse before he found a steady day job with the Mountain Goats, Darnielle approaches the album through a fictional character-a patient who is keeping a journal of his therapy sessions. What could have been a gimmick instead proves both critically engaging and emotionally harrowing, as the lively, angry, intelligent narrator voices his rage and confusion through his love for Ozzy.