Black Sabbath Heralds ‘The End’ With Final Tour, But Metalheads May Get New Ozzy Album
After fifty years scaring mothers and Christians everywhere, “The End” has finally come for Black Sabbath, who announced their last tour Thursday.
“It promises to surpass all previous tours with their most mesmerizing production ever. When the tour concludes, it will truly be the end,” the band announced, according to the Guardian.
The tour will begin in heavy metal’s heartland, the U.S. Midwest, in January in Omaha, Nebraska, and conclude in February in New York City’s Madison Square Garden. In April, the tour will head over to Australia and New Zealand, and more “The End” tour dates will be announced in October, Rolling Stone reported.
Black Sabbath brought heavy metal to the world in 1970, combining American blues with rather macabre themes when Ozzy Osburne and his bandmates were merely scruffy teens. Their later work frightened Christian groups, who heard Satanic messages in the lyrics.
The tour will be a bit disappointing to some fans, however, as it will not feature the original quartet. The original drummer, Bill Ward, who the Los Angeles Times called the “most influential metal pounders ever,” won’t join the tour.
Osburne, Tony Iommi, and Geezer Butler will be there — as they were for a reunion album and tour. Ozzy’s solo group drummer, Tommy Clufetos, played the previous tours, and likely will for “The End.”
Ward and the rest of the band haven’t been friendly for some time, and the drummer previously said about their feud only, “I wish them well, and I have no further comment.”
A new Black Sabbath tour has also been on the backburner as Iommi has fought with cancer; he was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2012, and earlier this year, revealed that he was in good health.
There have also been rumors that “The End” tour isn’t all Black Sabbath will have to offer at the end of its long and storied career. A year ago, Osbourne hinted that he would starting to write new songs with his bandmates earlier this year.
“If we’re going to do [it], I want to do it before I’m 70,” he said; Ozzy is 66. “Time isn’t on our side.”
The tour announcement, sadly, said nothing about a new Black Sabbath album.
However, there have been some whisperings about Ozzy recording another album. Just last week, Epic Records president Sylvia Rhone told Billboard that the rocker is working on something but declined to give more details because the project is in its early stages.
“It’s going to be a really special album. It’s going to be amazing, it’s something Ozzy has never done before that he’s always wanted to do.”
[Photo Courtesy Frazer Harrison/Getty Images]
