Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath recently quashed rumours of a final album – stating that the band would instead concentrate on a lengthy farewell tour called The End. According to a new interview however, fans will be able to purchase one last CD of unheard music, but it will only be available to tour ticket-holders.
Frontman Ozzy Osbourne and bassist Geezer Butler told Billboard that they had additional material from their 13 sessions with Rick Rubin, and have collated it for an eight-track album which will be accessible only at their shows: it includes unheard tracks Season of the Dead, Cry All Night, Take Me Home and Isolated Man, as well as live versions of tracks God Is Dead?, Age of Reason, End of the Beginning and Vol 4’s track Under the Sun.
Said Butler: We thought we’d put out an album of 13 songs, but when we were in the studio we wrote another three songs, which brought it up to 16 and then we left it to Rick Rubin to pick which songs would go on the album, and to give it some light and shade he picked the eight songs that were on the 13 album. We put a few songs on deluxe versions of the album and then we had the four left over, and we decided to do a gig-only CD.
Osbourne previously snubbed the rumours of a full-length Sabbath album owing to the success of their previous release, 13. He explained, “If it didn’t get to No 1 again and went to No 2, it would’ve felt like the wrong thing to do.”
Black Sabbath’s final tour – which will mostly celebrate the band’s 70s period – begins on 20 January in Omaha, Nebraska, and continues into September. Osbourne, Butler and Tony Iommi are joined by drummer Tommy Clufetos, who replaces estranged co-founder Bill Ward.