Black Sabbath Scrap Final Album Plans to Focus on Tour
A little over a year after Ozzy Osbourne announced that Black Sabbath would record a second reunion record, the band has abandoned plans to go into the studio. A rep for the group has confirmed to Rolling Stone that Black Sabbath have opted out of recording another studio album for Universal. Instead, the band has booked a lengthy farewell tour it has dubbed “The End.”
The singer had told Metal Hammer last September that the group would record one more record – which would follow up 2013’s chart-topping 13, an album that is also home to their Grammy-winning song “God Is Dead?” – and do a final tour. The vocalist said the idea arose at a time when he deciding whether or not to work on a new solo album, so he asked his wife and manager, Sharon, what was going on with Black Sabbath.
Osbourne told the magazine he’d like to record “sooner rather than later,” and the circumstance of recording at the time came down to guitarist Tony Iommi’s battle with lymphoma. “He’s obviously got his cancer treatment, but we’ll get onto it next year,” Osbourne said. “I don’t know if we’ll be writing in England or Los Angeles, but I’ll fly to the fucking moon for it if I have to.”
This week, as Osbourne prepped for a solo appearance at New Orleans’ Voodoo Fest, he told the city’s Times-Picayune that Sabbath had chosen not to do another LP. “It’s the end of Sabbath, believe me,” he said.
The group will kick off its final tour on January 20th in Omaha, Nebraska, with a first leg of U.S. dates running through February 27th. After international touring, they will return to North America for a run that begins in Wantagh, New York on August 17th and go through September 21st.
