Black Sabbath
13
Vertigo
ETA June 2013

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Uh-oh – we’re dealing with some Serious Stuff on this episode of the podcast. This week, Hugh is joined by Tom Doyle as they take a look at the unpleasant creeping tolerance for casual racism, sexism, homophobia and hate that has creeped into the fandom of modern metal, rock, and punk, and also at significant sections of the community’s unwillingness to recognise or address it in a meaningful way. Yeah, it’s not for the faint-hearted.

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30 years ago today, on 20 January 1982, an anonymous fan of Ozzy Osbourne took a live bat to a concert of the then-ex-Black Sabbath frontman in Iowa, Des Moines. He/She threw it onstage, and the rest, as they say, is history. While (thankfully) no footage of Osbourne’s unwitting chiropteracide, it does give us a good excuse to go revisit the album he was promoting on that tour – 1981’s Diary Of A Madman

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In short: Yes, yes it is. We’re not entirely sure why Dez Fafara (DevilDriver, Coal Chamber), Doug Aldrich (Whitesnake, Dio), Rob “Blasko” Nicholson (Prong, Rob Zombie, Danzig, Ozzy Osbourne), and John Tempesta (White Zombie, Testament, The Cult) decided it would be a good idea to team up and cover ‘Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer’ (for the Metal Christmas album, We Wish You A Merry Xmas and a Headbanging New Year). Neither are we quite sure whether or not the beyond OTT nature of the result in any way justifies the idea’s inherent stupidity. In either case, we’ll be damned if we have to suffer the knowledge of this song’s existence alone.

God Bless Ozzy Osbourne is being shown at over 200 cinemas this Thursday, 22 September and we’ve got two pairs of tickets to give away in London. You can win them here because this is a competition. It’s easy.

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Yes, you read that headline right. William Shatner, actor, musician, horse-breeder and all-round renaissance man, has confirmed via Twitter that none other than bearded biker-viking Zakk Wylde is to feature on his forth-coming new solo album, Seeking Major Tom.

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With Ozzy Osbourne bringing his new six-stringer to London for the first time, it made sense for use to send our residient guitar geek, Amit Sharma, to see if Gus G is up to the task of replacing Zakk Wylde.

With Ozzy Osbourne’s newest effort, Scream, hailed as one of his best in recent years, or at least as a step back towards a harder rock edge, tickets for this mini-tour of smallish venues went pretty quick. Zakk or no Zakk, this tour would be the perfect opportunity to catch the Prince of Fucking Darkness in an intimate setting. What made tonight even sweeter was that it was part of this year’s iTunes Festival, therefore free if you won a ticket.

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Ozzy Osbourne
Scream
Epic Records
14 June 2010

by Tom Dare

It’s unlikely to have escaped the attention of even passing fans of heavy music that that Ozzy Osbourne changed guitarists a few months ago. After his split with Zakk Wylde and the appointment of Firewind’s wizard of widdle, Gus G, there were a few eyebrows raised. Would a practitioner of power metal – however accomplished – fit in with the Prince Of Fucking Darkness’ style? Scream, the first album to feature the new line-up, does not answer this question.

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Moan, moan, moan, moan, moan – that’s all Hugh Platt ever seems to do. Right now, he’s got the initial line-up for Ozzfest UK 2010 in his sights.

Doesn’t the line-up for the first UK Ozzfest in nine years look, I dunno, kinda familiar? And yes, this is the first UK Ozzfest since 2001 – simply calling the day that Ozzy Osbourne played at Download Festival 2005 “Ozzfest Day” does not make it an Ozzfest.

No, my gripe is simple – after so long away, this gang of old hats is what we’re given as the top flight line-up?

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We all love Ozzy. It doesn’t matter how decrepit or rubbish at singing he gets, he’s still Ozzy Osbourne and blah, blah, blah. The vague point of this is that he’s got a new album, Scream coming out in June and he’s done one of the funniest bits of promo that we’ve seen in a long time.

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