Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler: ‘If God Could See Us Killing Each Other in His Name, He’d Be Disgusted

Black Sabbath have navigated the dark side for years, but have listeners really understood their messages? In an interview with The Weeklings, bassist Geezer Butler spoke about some of the responses he’s gotten to their music over the years.

“People always like to find the ‘evil’ in the music, so they’d quote the ‘pope on a rope’ part [from the Master of Reality album] out of context, as usual,” said Butler. “People like to find the negative in everything. We weren’t interested in writing songs about the ‘nice’ things in the world, everyone else was writing about that. We wanted to inject some reality into music. I think if we’d been called White Sunday we’d have a totally different direction.”

Butler also discussed his thought process on developing the lyrics to “After Forever,” which some have called the first real Christian rock song. He recalls, “A lot of it was because of the situation in Northern Island at the time. There were a lot of religious troubles between the Protestants against the Catholics. I was brought up strictly Catholic and I guess I was naïve in thinking that religion shouldn’t be fought over. I always felt that God and Jesus wanted us to love each other.”

The bassist added, “It was just a bad time in Northern Island, setting bombs off in England and such. We all believed in Jesus — and yet people were killing each other over it. To me, it was just ridiculous. I thought that if God could see us killing each other in his name, he’d be disgusted.”

There has been talk that Black Sabbath will say their farewell in 2016, but it remains to be seen if and when a new album or tour will be announced.

Loudwire