On Listening to Iron Man

I just spent a couple of days listening to classic Black Sabbath -- Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Vol. 4, and of course Paranoid. Holy crap has that stuff not aged. I mean, take a new(ish), hot band like Wolfmother that uses similar stripped down instrumentation and I swear you couldn't tell which was released this year and which was released 40(!) years ago. If I were to write in detail about my favorite songs I would need 30 pages, but the biggest surprise to me was how a hoary old cliche like Iron Man --if you take the time to listen to the whole thing -- can sound so fresh. The most comparable experience I can think of -- and I know this is pretty far-fetched, but bear with me -- is visiting Niagara Falls. You think you remember it, you've seen it on countless postcards, it's the butt of many cheesy jokes about newlyweds on their honeymoon, it's way overdeveloped and overvisited, but then when you actually see the thing you go "Whoaaaaa."