The Sabbath Stones
1996 compilation album by Black Sabbath
The Sabbath Stones is a compilation album by the English heavy metal band Black Sabbath, released on 29 April 1996, through I.R.S. Records as a European exclusive. The recording mostly features songs taken from the Tony Martin era of the band, while also featuring tracks from Born Again, Seventh Star, and Dehumanizer. It was the final album to be released by Black Sabbath under the I.R.S. label.
Album information
The album was created solely to fulfill Black Sabbath's contract with I.R.S. It included a short story about Black Sabbath which had some mistakes, including the misspelling of Vinny Appice's name on the front cover of the CD as "Vinnie", a mistake which also appeared on both the Mob Rules and Live Evil sleeves.
This compilation features at least one song from each of the eight Black Sabbath albums released from 1983 until 1995. This period covers all five studio albums released by the band with lead singer Tony Martin, one studio album with lead singer Ian Gillan, one with Glenn Hughes and one with Ronnie James Dio.
The version of "Headless Cross" that appears on this album starts with the last few seconds of the track "The Gates of Hell" (Which precedes "Headless Cross" on the Headless Cross album) before the opening drum line.
"Loser Gets It All", according to the liner notes in the album, was supposedly one of Tony Iommi's favorite tracks to both perform and write. It was recorded during the Forbidden sessions, but only appeared on the Japanese version of the album.
“The Sabbath Stones” enters the record as 1996 compilation album by Black Sabbath. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Sabbath, Stones and compilation can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“The Sabbath Stones” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Sabbath, Stones and compilation provides the most credible route into that argument.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 18, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q675807. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1996, 1983 and 1995.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Sabbath Stones” 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.