(Credits: Tony Iommi)
Mon 15 September 2025 2:00, UK
Tony Iommi was never going to have the warmest feelings about Ozzy Osbourne when he decided to leave Black Sabbath.
The whole idea of working with him after Never Say Die was never going to work, and even if he did recover nicely, the idea of bringing in Ronnie James Dio to sing was a blessing from the unholy metal gods on Heaven and Hell. But after ‘The Prince of Darkness’ had some tunes under his belt, some of his albums were never all that necessary as far as Iommi was concerned.
Then again, Osbourne’s first step up as a solo star was actually a stark contrast to what Iommi was used to. I mean, look at the first singles that the new Sabbath and Osbourne had released. ‘Heaven and Hell’ introduced Iommi as the same dark riff lord everyone knew, but in Randy Rhoads, Osbourne had a shot of optimism brought into his sound on ‘Crazy Train’, complete with a disco backbeat and a peppy verse all in a major key.
It wasn’t what most metalheads were expecting, but that didn’t make it any less infectious. There were many opportunities for Osbourne to work on different styles of music, but there was always going to be a question around where the band would be going after Rhoads passed away. His death cast a dark cloud over everything, but Osbourne knew the best way for him to recover was to go back to his roots.
He was always a blues singer, after all, but was he going to spend his time collaborating with people like Eric Clapton on a bluesy album? Nope. It was back to the same old grind on Speak of the Devil, which was a compilation of a bunch of Sabbath favourites that Osbourne had been playing on tour.
And while he does an admirable job playing all of them, it’s not like this version of ‘Iron Man’ is going to be replacing the original by any means. Iommi is simply too important to their sound to be considered replaceable, and even if he didn’t have anything against Rhoads’s playing, he couldn’t help but feel confused as to why Osbourne would want to go back to his old band so quickly.
A Sabbath reunion was far from a possibility, but when talking about Osbourne’s solo career, Iommi felt that the frontman’s reinterpretation of Sabbath songs didn’t need to happen, saying, “[Speak of the Devil] was surprising. Because there was no need to really do that. Because he’d established his self in his own right.” But what it did give us was an excuse to hear new guitarist Brad Gillis interpret those songs in his own way.
Gillis was not about to step into the shoes of Rhoads easily, but hearing him reinvent some of the riffs are pretty interesting. His version of ‘Iron Man’ is definitely a lot brighter sounding than the Sabbath original, and while it does suck that we aren’t given a true version of ‘Children of the Grave’ with that amazing downtuned section, hearing Gillis weave around the changes does give a different look at one of Osbourne’s most demented vocal performances.
There are definitely spots that seem to be a little bit off compared to Sabbath’s version, but this was never supposed to be a substitution for Sabbath’s songs. This was a chance for Osbourne to go back and try to create that same spark that he had in the beginning while going through one of the biggest losses of his career.
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