Just yesterday, Bill Ward released a statement in which he threatened to bow out of the recently announced new Black Sabbath album and world tour unless he was given “a ‘signable’ contract.” Now Black Sabbath have announced via their Facebook page that they are, indeed, proceeding without their now-once-again-former drummer:

We were saddened to hear yesterday via Facebook that Bill declined publicly to participate in our current Black Sabbath plans…we have no choice but to continue recording without him although our door is always open… We are still in the UK with Tony. Writing and recording the new album and on a roll… See you at Download!!!

- Tony, Ozzy and Geezer

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UPDATE, 2:06 pm: Reader Joe Siegler tells me that Ward didn’t “hold out” in ’97 — he was never asked to re-join the band. I apologize for my lapse in knowledge of Sabbath reunion lore. If he really wasn’t asked in 1997, that makes this whole thing all the more dramatic and dispiriting. Original story follows below…

Hope you weren’t too excited about Bill Ward participating in the upcoming Black Sabbath reunion.

Ward has always been the hold-out with these reunions. He didn’t participate when the band got back together for Ozzfest in ’97 (although by 1998, he had indeed rejoing the band), and he wasn’t a part of Heaven & Hell, the Dio-era Sabbath reunion, either. Now, according to a statement on his website, he may not be part of the Sabbath’s recently announced new album and tour, either:

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After months of “speculation” (by which I mean we all knew this was happening, but no one would officially confirm it), Black Sabbath announced today at a press conference at LA’s Whiskey A-Go-Go — where they played their first American show back in 1970 – that they are, indeed, reuniting for both a world tour and a new album… which will be produced by Rick Rubin. Rubin says the band has written half the album already, and that recording will begin in early 2012.

The above video montage, also heralding the reunion, appeared on the band’s website at 11:11 am PST. The video also reveals that the band will be headlining this year’s Download Festival… so now we know who two of the headliners will be. I wonder if the only reason Metallica are playing the Black Album in its entirety is because of Black Sabbath? If so, that’s pretty silly. And it makes me wonder if AC/DC, doing all of Back in Black, will be the third headliner.

We know from Heaven and Hell that Tony Iommi still has some good riffs in him; now I guess we just have to wait and see if they can make this cool without Dio or what.

Debate in the comments section below.

-AR

I’m way pumped that Steel Panther’s Balls Out album broke the Top 40 for first-week sales. That is awesome and it brings reality one teeny notch closer to my dream of a Ozzfest-sized mega-glam festival curated by SPanther and friends. In my fantasyworld, the bill would mix glory-era acts that still rip (Cinderella, Kix, Winger), now-dormant underdogs from that time (Junkyard, Dangerous Toys, Love/Hate), super-special events (Ozzy, Zakk, Geezer, and Vinny play all of No Rest For The Wicked; the returns of Badlands, Blue Murder, and Bonham) and most vitally a bunch of great, young glam bands like Crazy Lixx, The Last Vegas, and Crashdiet. This historic fest would hail the genre’s redwoods and fertilize its saplings for tomorrow’s party metal forests. Um yeah. And absolutely, positively no Eddie Trunk LOL.

But for now, the reality is that Sweden’s brightest glam light Crashdiet is in Los Angeles to kick off a run of West Coast dates (info here). Fuckin’ A right they are. The Little Glam Metal Band That Could looks ready to party in hair metal Graceland (above, with beardo), so expect some big-boner performances this week. Let’s consider it dress rehearsal for Steel Panther and MetalSucks’ MEGA-BONER FEST L.A. 2015. See you there!

-ADF

Get awesome Crashdiet tourdates here and records here. 

To help promote their upcoming tour, on October 11 Judas Priest will release The Chosen Few, their umpteenth career retrospective, and one which does not feature any new material. The Chosen Few does have a hook, though — I mean, beyond the fact that the band members appear on the cover only as silhouettes, I assume at least in part to downplay the fact that a certain key member is no longer in the group.

No, the hook  (and this is actually a neat idea) is that the band has let a lot of other celebrity musicians — including Ozzy, Lemmy, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kerry King, Slash, and Vinnie Paul  – choose which songs would appear on the collection. And, yeah, it’s interesting to know that Zakk Wylde is way into “Grinder,” and and that Randy Blythe and David Coverdale might actually have something to talk about at a cocktail party, and that Joe Satriani likes his Priest heavier than I might have suspected.

But like I said, there’s no new material here, so I can’t quite imagine why anyone would want this album anyway. The coolest thing about The Chosen Few is seeing which dude chose which song, and you can do that after the jump. So, look, we just saved you ten bucks.

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Tony Iommi just posted the below message on his official website. It’s not exactly a denial that there’s no Sabbath reunion going on, but it is a denial that Iommi has confirmed the reunion, so, uh… yeah, I guess let’s see how this one plays out.

Here’s the statement:

“I’m saddened that a Birmingham journalist whom I trusted has chosen this point in time to take a conversation we had back in June and make it sound like we spoke yesterday about a Black Sabbath reunion.

“At the time I was supporting the Home of Metal exhibition and was merely speculating, shooting the breeze, on something all of us get asked constantly, ‘Are you getting back together?’

“Thanks to the internet it’s gone round the world as some sort of ‘official’ statement on my part, absolute nonsense.  I hope he’s enjoyed his moment of glory, he won’t have another at my expense.

“to my old pals, Ozzy, Geezer and Bill, sorry about this, I should have known better.

“All the best, Tony “

-AR

Thanks to Cody Daniels for the heads up.

Back in December 2008, Ozzy Osbourne’s manager-wife Sharon hosted the reunion special of VH1′s Rock of Love Charm School and was being her usual unjustifiably smug self. But then RoL girl/giga-fox Megan Hauserman (above left) took the stage and had the nerve to return-volley each of Sharon’s old lady sour-grapes insults — culminating in a fist-pumpingly astute observation that Sharon’s only claim to fame is shepherding a sad drug casualty to creatively dubious solo success — at which point Sharon “doused Hauserman with her drink,” “punch[ed] and grabb[ed] her by the hair and refus[ed] to let go,” and “scratch[ed] her.” Three months later, Hauserman formally filed suit against Sharon for battery, negligence, and infliction of emotional distress.

The case was finally headed for court today — nearly two years after the filing — but then the parties reached a settlement Monday. It seems that part of the deal is non-disclosure of its terms, but two separate big-shot legal professionals I know each kinda conjectured to me that Sharon’s strategy likely was to wait for Hauserman to initiate settlement for a smaller amount in advance of the court date. But Hauserman doesn’t need quick cash ‘cuz she’s marrying a rich Italian hunk (as all babes should do), nor does it seem that Shosbourne holds any career leverage over her (or over anybody except for her kids, her manicurists, and Ozzy’s fleet of increasingly off-brand sidemen). So no dice. The concept of punitive damages is to ensure that even the very rich are held responsible for their wrongdoings; as such, it’s possible that Hauserman was awarded a sum large enough to be able to move me into a house opposite Osbourne’s from which I could moon, curse, and otherwise taunt Sharon on a daily basis. ‘Cuz fuck her.

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In 1968, Gary Moore (above, top left) was just 16 years old when he joined future Thin Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott in the Dublin blues-rock quartet Skid Row*. So, Moore was a charter member of the Society of Overachieving Teen Guitarists that would later include Steve Vai (19, Frank Zappa), Zakk Wylde (19, Ozzy Osbourne), and Devin Townsend (19, Steve Vai). Pretty elite company.

After a pair of short stints in Thin Lizzy, Moore again reunited with Lynott in 1979 for the band’s seminal Black Rose: A Rock Legend (see Axl Rose’s Black Rose-themed tattoo here, upper left). More than twenty solo albums followed, including 2008’s Bad For You Baby.

British tabloid The Sun reports that Moore, 58, was discovered unresponsive by medical staff in a Spain hotel suite where there were “definite signs of alcohol.” The Sun also quotes a source at the hotel who has stated that Moore “seemed fine when he left [the hotel bar] around 11 pm.” A post mortem has been scheduled.

After the jump, check out the MetalSucks round up of tributes to Moore by members of Obituary, Opeth, Black Flag, Testament, Black Sabbath, and mo(o)re.

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So I’ve been living in the UK for about four months now, and have managed to take in quite a lot of this “culture” thing they’re so fond of over here. I’ve been to nine countries, eight major metal festivals, and a handful of cities in Ol’ Blighty itself; I’ve gate-crashed hotel parties in Norway with the drummer of Swallow the Sun, stage-dived into a sea of muddy grind freaks in the Czech Republic, gotten roaring drunk with Wolves in the Throne Room in the Netherlands, met Gaahl’s boyfriend in France, gotten lost in Rome, watched Electric Wizard blow an amp in Manchester, lost my mind to Eyehategod at Hellfest, seen Manowar (‘nuff said there) – and that was just the first couple months. Between all the metal, mud, bruises, whiskey, calimocho, hard cider, and terrifying Czech liquor (Becherovka and Fernet are no fucking joke, even if it is Kevin Sharp and Danny Herrera pouring you a shot), I realized that, somehow, something was still missing.

To my immense chagrin, I had yet to take that all-too-necessary pilgrimage up through the Black Country and into the Unholy Land itself – to Birmingham, England. Every metaller worth his leather (and several million other music fans besides) knows exactly why this unimpressive, coal-smudged city matters so much. Birmingham is the ancestral home of heavy metal. Everything – whether it be doom, black metal, powerviolence, or even the plague that is deathcore – everything came from here. The famed Mermaid Pub provided a fertile breeding ground for extreme metal, nestled as it was in a dodgy part of town where the cops ignored the punkers and longhairs milling around out front as the early rumblings of a deadly new sound thundered away upstairs The city itself was the original stomping ground of the dirty sexy hard rock’n’roll of Led Zeppelin, the NWOBHM gods in Judas Priest, the crusty proto-grind of Sore Throat, the scummy grindcore forefathers of Napalm Death, the industrial noise terror of Godflesh, and the one and only BLACK FUCKING SABBATH.

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UPDATE: Our friend Dan Rodriguez over at Metal Insider has a much more detailed explanation. Check it out!

…but with every move the old fucker makes, it’s as though he’s begging me to.

So.

According to local newspaper tabloid the New York Post, Ozzy is now suing Tony Iommi over the Black Sabbath band name:

The “Godfather of Heavy Metal” claims guitarist Tony Iommi illegally claimed sole ownership of the band’s name, in a filing with the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Osbourne is suing Iommi for a 50 percent interest in the “Black Sabbath” trademark, along with a portion of Iommi’s profits from use of the name.

The Manhattan federal court suit also charges that Osbourne’s “signature lead vocals” are largely responsible for the band’s “extraordinary success,” noting that its popularity plummeted during his absence from 1980 through 1996.

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There are probably more old farts making relevant music than I usually give credit for. For every Ozzy or Metallica, whose later years have been more or less a total fucking disaster (creatively if not financially), there’s a Testament or Napalm Death who are still making music worth listening to after two or even three decades in the biz.

Of course, few of those artists have been at as long as the members of Black Sabbath – now re-christened Heaven & Hell – and even most of the Sabbath peers who can still pull it out live (Priest, Maiden) aren’t really releasing albums that are worth a damn these days. So the fact that The Devil You Know is so freakin’ sweet makes it feel like something of a marvel.

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The Devil You Know, the new Dio-Sabbath record, is every bit as rockin’ as I’d hoped it will be. I’m working on a review before its release a week from today, but if you’re anxious to hear it – and you really, really should be – it’s currently streaming on The Leak, which, for better or worse, is a VH1 sub-site.

GO LISTEN TO THIS ALBUM. IT IS AWESOME AND PUTS ALL OTHER VETERAN BANDS TO SHAME.

-AR

In 2004, the Painkiller-era Judas Priest line-up reunited and blew Black Sabbath off the stage at Ozzfest, so I supposed it’s only fair that in 2008, Sabbath should return the favor on the Metal Masters tour.

Of course, swapping out Ozzy Osbourne for Ronnie James Dio didn’t hurt.

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