(Credits: Far Out / Kreepin Deth)
If you’re not a huge lover of heavy metal, you might have looked upon the global outcry following the news of Ozzy Osbourne’s passing and being somewhat confused, but this mass of well-wishers were well placed.
“It is with more sadness than mere words can convey,” started the statement that stopped the music world in its tracks.
What was shaping up to be a normal afternoon was rocked by one of the biggest names in rock being pronounced dead. “We have to report that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne has passed away this morning.”
So, what was it that really made Ozzy Osbourne such a one-off? Truth is, he’d done so much over the years that it’s tricky to pin it all on one thing. Still, his time with Black Sabbath is definitely worth shouting about. The band helped launch heavy metal into the spotlight, offering rock fans a sound they’d never heard before and paving the way for loads of future artists to follow in their footsteps.
It was more than just Black Sabbath’s sound that captured the hearts of everyone who listened; it was the fact that said sound somehow captured the feelings of hopelessness and frustration that many people felt in post-war Britain. This wasn’t just music that was good to listen to, it was music that understood said listeners, that provided them with some kind of release from their life that, at the time, felt relatively stagnant.
Not only did Black Sabbath usher in a new era of rock, but they also showed all of the alternative creatives that there was room for them in the mainstream. No longer did you have to be a pop star that looked all prim and proper, you could have taste that operated outside of popular culture and yet still be widely accepted. A lot of the bands that we listen to in the modern age that play heavy music or engage in some kind of experimental art, no matter how subdued or extreme, on some level, owe a debt to Black Sabbath.
Very few people come close to the level that Black Sabbath reached. In fact, most musicians wouldn’t know what that level even is. The band are an indescribable force, one that inspired within the genre that they created, but also knocked walls down in styles of music that they never even touched. The whole idea, if you had to concentrate it all into one specific idea, would be one of freedom, the idea that there are no limits within music and therefore shouldn’t be within whatever you create.
This is a definition that could apply to Metallica, who have done a great range during their careers; however, if you were to ask Lars Ulrich, he’d say that there is one band in particular who operate with the similar freedom Sabbath championed, and who he therefore considers a more modern iteration of the band. Here, Ulrich is talking specifically about Alice in Chains.
“The only contemporary band I think of as a peer is Alice in Chains,” he said, “They sit on a pedestal for me, pretty much above everybody else. They’re like a ’90s Black Sabbath. There’s something about the riffs, the looseness. It’s not boxed in, it’s not square. Sometimes when I listen to some of our earlier stuff, I get this vision in my mind of a square. Alice in Chains’ sound has a lot of round edges to it.”
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