“It’s the end”: the album so bad Black Sabbath abandoned it
Black Sabbath may have been heavy metal pioneers, but they were definitely responsible for creating some clangers in their time.
Some of those were beyond their control, others not so much. It was clear that, in the years when Ozzy Osbourne took a raincheck from the band and their line-up went through all manner of changes, it made it a lot easier for things to go awry. But as it turned out, the worst offence happened when they were actually back together.
Let’s set the scene: the year was 2014, which effectively tells you all you need to know about how this story would end, because none of Black Sabbath were particularly in their prime by that point. Nevertheless, Osbourne, Tony Iommi, and Geezer Butler had reunited for the first time since 1978 the previous year, and they so badly wanted things to be on the up.
Without wanting to make an overly depressing point of it, that was perhaps easier said than done. The trio had been beaten by many of the storms of rock and roll over the years, but still managed to put out the album 13 in June 2013, as their first new record in some 18 years. The next natural question, though, was whether there would be any more.
As far as Osbourne was concerned, the answer was a definitive yes. Off the back of 13, he said in a 2014 interview: “It was a lot of fun, so we’re going to do one more album, and a final tour.” The phrase ‘famous last words’ might seem a little morbid in the context, but it was certainly fitting with the hindsight of what was to come.
His bandmates possibly tried to pull on the handbrake slightly, with Butler subsequently offering up that they would only create another album “if it’s right”. Yet Osbourne was steadfast – and the more his dreams climbed to exorbitant heights, the more bruising the fall back to reality was. There were many hurdles in the way.
Prime among them was not just the frontman’s own declining health but that of Iommi’s, who had been diagnosed with lymphoma in 2011 and was still undergoing treatment at the time. Then there were other logistics – studio time, getting hold of producer Rick Rubin, and also the small fact that they only had four songs, which were leftovers from 13 – that meant the whole thing fell to pieces.
“It’s the end of Sabbath, believe me,” Osbourne eventually conceded in 2015, knowing that no album was ultimately a better note to bow out on than a terrible one. The part of the promise he did manage to deliver was the final tour, and the band set out on their The End tour in 2016, bringing the curtain down in Birmingham the following year.
Of course, it would be the better part of ten years later before Black Sabbath really gave their last and definitive farewell, but it wouldn’t have been Osbourne if things were always predictable and plain sailing. Whether it was in life or his ultimate death, his real job was just to keep people constantly guessing.
