Geezer Butler names “easily the worst album” Black Sabbath made
After years of pioneering heavy metal with Black Sabbath, Geezer Butler is opening up about what he considers to be the worst album they ever made. Black Sabbath were originally a hard rock outfit before being categorised as metal due to their dark lyrical themes.
When talking about the low point of Sabbath, Butler pointed to their last album with Ozzy Osbourne, Never Say Die, telling Metal Edge, “I will say that Never Say Die! is easily the worst album we did. We tried to manage ourselves and produce the record ourselves … but in truth, not one of us had a single clue about what to do. By that point, we were spending more time with lawyers and in court rather than being in the studio writing. It was just too much pressure on us, and the writing suffered”.
A few months after the album’s release, Osbourne would leave Sabbath for a solo career, after which the remaining band members got Ronnie James Dio to fill out their sound. When talking about the issues that the original lineup had, Butler also confessed to overreaching, continuing, “we were trying to progress too much musically. We completely lost the plot, I think. We stopped doing the things that made Sabbath what it was and began going from more melodic stuff, which was a mistake looking back”.
Sabbath would eventually reunite with the core lineup, minus drummer Bill Ward for the album 13 in 2013, but the lineup has since played farewell shows and has retired the Sabbath moniker.
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