To record Sabbath Bloody Sabbath the band opted to return to the UK, where they rented Clearwell Castle in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, England, in which the likes of Led Zeppelin, Mott the Hoople and Deep Purple wrote and recorded. The medieval surroundings may have revitalised the band musically, but also left a sinister impression; in the liner notes to the 1998 live album Reunion, Iommi recalls, "We rehearsed in the armoury there and one night I was walking down the corridor with Ozzy and we saw this figure in a black cloak ... We followed this figure back into the armoury and there was absolutely no one there. Whoever it was had disappeared into thin air! The people that owned the castle knew all about this ghost and they said, 'Oh yes, that's the ghost of so and so. We were like 'What!?'" Adds Butler, "We rehearsed in the dungeons and it was really creepy but it had some atmosphere, it conjured up things, and stuff started coming out again". While working in the dungeon, Iommi stumbled onto the main riff of "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath", which set the tone for the new material. In 2001 Butler admitted to Dan Epstein of Guitar World, "We almost thought that we were finished as a band ... Once Tony came out with the initial riff for 'Sabbath Bloody Sabbath' we went 'We're baaaack!'"

"I wanted to do something mystic and foreboding. I also wanted to feature the infamous haunted castle the band recorded the album in. The figure in the foreground is the spectral ghost the band claimed to have seen.

I chose a moth as the focus because it represents madness, ruin death and sensuality in the spirit world. The duality of the wings felt like a good way of visually representing heaven and hell into the design which is nod to the front and back cover of the album.The circular design under the moth is supposed to reflect a vintage amp speaker, with the fire representing hell and the doomy riffs heard on the record.The consolations in the four corners are the band members signs - Cancer, Pices, Taurus and Sagittarius." - Ghoulish Gary Pullin