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The bulk of Paranoid was produced by Rodger Bain at Regent Sounds Studios in Denmark St, London, before that crucial added touch, and what would become the title track, was added at Island Studios, where the rest of the four-track recordings were also 'bounced' onto 16 tracks, giving the group more space to experiment with effects.

It was here that Bain also came up with the idea to use a ring modulator on Ozzy's voice on the introduction to 'Iron Man', providing the track with the robotic roar that opens it so memorably.

'Rodger also used that on the guitar solo on the track "Paranoid" itself'' said Iommi. 'At first, I said, "What the hell's that?! It sounds horrible!". But they went ahead and picked it as the solo that ended up on the LP all the same'.

He also boosted the sound of those blunderbuss riffs by other means. 'It was double-tracking if not triple-tracking', Bain says. 'It would be a close mic and an ambient mic that would be way off. But it was the combination that gave it that punch and gave it the size of the sound.'

Nonetheless, Bain and engineer Tom Allom were for the most part a hands-off production team. 'Roger didn't interfere', Iommi told Kerrang! 'He'd listen to what we were doing and then he'd suggest various things that we could develop. Tom would mic everything up, and we'd just play. It certainly wasn't a case of it taking five hours just to get a guitar sound or a drum sound.'

Bain explained to Mix Online: 'If you put compressors on something, EQ it over the top, you lose that power. It just weakens the whole sound. The original way we worked was to keep it really raw'.