Masters of Reality
American rock band
Masters of Reality is an American rock band formed in 1981 by frontman Chris Goss and guitarist Tim Harrington in Syracuse, New York, United States. They took the name for the band from a misprinted label of the third Black Sabbath album, Master of Reality. Goss has remained the only constant band member. Since the release of their self-titled debut album in 1989, Masters of Reality has released seven studio albums so far.
The band's music has touched on many styles, ranging from hard rock to blues, from progressive rock to Beatlesque pop music. The band is sometimes associated with the "Palm Desert Scene", which includes bands like Kyuss, Queens of the Stone Age and many other stoner rock and "desert rock" bands.
History
Frontman Chris Goss started out with a band covering heavy 1970s rock acts (New York Dolls, Aerosmith, David Bowie, Blue Öyster Cult, Alice Cooper, Led Zeppelin) and writing his own songs since circa 1975. After getting into punk rock for a while (performing at CBGB in 1978), he did not play guitar for a few years, instead preferring electronic music like Kraftwerk and becoming a club DJ.
In 1981 Goss and Tim Harrington started to make experimental home recordings with lo-fi, cheap and/or borrowed equipment that included a Sanyo boombox Rhythm Ace drum machine, a Korg, synthesizers and a Fender Vibroverb amp. The rhythm tracks of synths and a beat recorded on cassette would be played back to "overdub" vocals, guitar, more synthesizers, et cetera. They considered Manson Family as a name for their act, but never actually used it for their performances.
“Masters of Reality” enters the record as american rock band. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Masters, Reality and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Masters of Reality” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Masters, Reality and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q932852. VIAF identifies the subject as 150885188. The Library of Congress control number is n91117110. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1981, 1989, 1975 and 1978.
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This entry incorporates text from “Masters of Reality” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.