Metal Anarchy

During a recent interview with Stereogum, Ozzy Osbourne reflected on Black Sabbath’s final album “13.” The singer says the effort “wasn’t really a Black Sabbath album.”

Osbourne said the following when asked if he feels good about the ways “13” left things:

“Not really, because to be perfectly honest, I didn’t really get a charge from the album. Although Rick Rubin is a good friend of mine, I wasn’t really… I was just singing. It was like stepping back in time, but it wasn’t a glorious period. Though Geezer [Butler] did a lot of lyric writing for me, which he’s very, very good at. It wasn’t an earth-shattering experience for me.”

He continued when asked if Black Sabbath is completely finished in his mind:

“I would like to say it’s completely done. I think it’s time. The only thing I really regret, to be honest, is that Bill Ward didn’t play on the album. It wasn’t really a Black Sabbath album. I’m not saying that one day we might not all go in a room and come up with the perfect Black Sabbath album. But I’ll say, [13] wasn’t recorded the way Black Sabbath recorded records. We’d gone right back past the point where we took charge, back to when someone else had full control of our recording. Which we never did from Vol. 4 onwards.”