THEY ARE THE KINGS OF HEAVY
“Black Sabbath have that 70s sound but the songs are so heavy that they transcend time. When you listen to Black Sabbath, that intro is still so creepy and undeniably heavy… and there are a million examples like that. For us, diving back into those records, when you listen to those albums as musicians, you can only listen and say, ‘Woah, you guys were onto something that was so next level!’ It is timeless.”/o:p
THE ORIGINALS ARE THE BEST
“I’m definitely an Ozzy guy. Heaven And Hell had some awesome riffs but I’m definitely of the mind that when Ozzy isn’t there, they are a different kind of band. When you listen to the Dio material against the older work, or even 13 that came out recently, it’s just different. There are elements of their roots there but it’s like hearing Audioslave: there are all of those elements that made Rage Against The Machine rip in there but it’s just not the same band. I feel that way about Black Sabbath.”/o:p
THEY BROUGHT EVIL TO ROCK’N’ROLL
“Sabbath have that darkness that so many bands aim for but it always feels like they didn’t purposefully seek that evil sound out. They understand less is more. So much of the tension that builds up on Black Sabbath is because there’s nothing happening! Some other people can hammer that home – like on the first Danzig album – and Sabbath have that ability to find darkness and heaviness without just cranking their amps or creating noise. It’s not just Ozzy’s subject matter being dark or Bill Ward’s drumming being so sparse. Bill’s jazz drumming somehow made things creepier, too! Geezer and Tony play totally different things, which is amazing but unsettling. It all just sounds straight-up creepy!”/o:p
TONY IOMMI IS THE ULTIMATE RIFF LORD
“Where do you even begin? Ha ha ha! There’s just no way of describing how ahead of his time Tony Iommi was with all of that shit. Iommi is so good that it’s almost as though you have to have extensively listened to the Sabbath back catalogue, just to make sure that you aren’t ripping him off. He was that far ahead of the game. If we’re in a band rehearsal and Scott [Middleton] cranks a Sabbath riff, you can’t help but stop and think to yourself, ‘That still sounds fresh and exciting and heavy.’ You just can’t mess with Iommi.”/o:p
NO SABBATH, NO METAL
“As a music nerd, you can look into the timeline of music and say, ‘It wouldn’t be the same without this handful of bands’ and Sabbath are definitely one of them. Everything would be different without them. Vol. 4 still sells thousands of copies every year because people still know that if they want to get to the root of all of the cool shit they listen to today, you have to go back and listen to Sabbath. They’re one of the essential bands to get into if you like metal. Go to see Sabbath and the fans are so hardcore that you can get a field of people singing along to a guitar solo and there’s so much magic in that.”
SABBATH ARE FOR EVERYONE
“There are those bands that transcend genre. I was a punk kid and Sabbath blew my mind. People into all types of rock will all come together to worship Sabbath in the same way that Thunderstruck will make you stoked no matter what you listen to. If you’re into modern metal of any kind, I just can’t imagine you hearing Black Sabbath and saying, ‘Nah…’ That guy surely doesn’t exist.”
CANCER BATS TOUR WITH WHILE SHE SLEEPS THIS MONTH. THEIR NEW ALBUM, SEARCHING FOR ZERO, IS OUT NOW VIA HASSLE/o:p
