Black Sabbath, ‘Into the Void’ vs. Deep Purple, ‘Space Truckin”: Rock Star Wars

Two monsters of '70s riffage square off against each other in the first round of our Rock Star Wars battle.

To try and fill our days between now and the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens movie, we’ve tracked down 32 space-themed classic rock songs and paired them off against each other in 16 first-round battles. The field will be halved every week based on your votes, until only the spaciest song in rock history remains standing.

"Into the Void" was released as the final song on Black Sabbath's third album, Master of Reality, in 1971. The six-minute epic begins in outer space -- "Rocket engines burning fuel so fast," Ozzy Osbourne sings -- before a typically doomsday and earthbound message surfaces: "Could it be the end of man and time?" By the time the track reaches its conclusion, humans are left to their fate of war and pollution while a new planet is scoped out for peace and happiness.

Deep Purple's "Space Truckin'' is decidedly less deep than that, pretty much acknowledging over four minutes how awesome it was to be Deep Purple in the early '70s: "We had a lot of luck on Venus, we always had a ball on Mars, meeting all the groovy people ... " The song capped the band's 1972 Machine Head album, which went on to become the band's biggest album. After its success, Deep Purple could add a few other planets in our galaxy to its conquests.

So which of these songs will emerge victorious from this round? It’s your choice. You can listen to both tracks below, and vote once per hour in each of the this round's Rock Star Wars battles until polls close on Nov. 23 at 11:59PM ET. Your choice for our Rock Star Wars champion will be revealed on Dec. 22, 2015.

Listen to Black Sabbath's 'Into the Void'

Listen to Deep Purple's 'Space Truckin''

Black Sabbath Albums Ranked Worst to Best