Electric Funeral: Predicting The Collaborations At Black Sabbath's Big Farewell
Wednesday, 12 February 2025
Written by Huw Baines
All things must end, and fittingly Black Sabbath’s story will end where it began. The metal pioneers will reunite in their original configuration — Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward — at Birmingham’s Villa Park this summer to sign off once and for all. Billed as Back To The Beginning, the July 5 concert in the band’s home city will bring together a who’s who of modern metal, with their heavy contribution to the shape and sound of a whole genre set to ring from every note.
With Metallica, Pantera, Slayer, Halestorm, Alice in Chains, Gojira, Anthrax, Lamb of God and Mastodon all set to perform, we decided to rifle through the history books in order to put together some possible ideas for covers or collaborations that might allow for the supporting cast to pay tribute to Sabbath’s outsized influence on their own careers.
Tickets go general on sale at 10am on February 14, and all profits from the show will support Cure Parkinson’s, the Birmingham Children’s Hospital and Acorn Children’s Hospice, supported by Aston Villa. Until then, join us in speculating on what might be this summer.
Metallica - Hole in the Sky
It makes sense that the band with the most metal name of all time (for better or worse) were asked to induct the godfathers of heavy metal into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. In addition to James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich’s speech, though, there was Metallica’s performance of a Sabbath medley that opened with Hole in the Sky, a picture-perfect example of their unnerving power from their 1975 album ‘Sabotage’. Mutating as the song progresses, this is one of Iommi’s most thunderous riffs, while Ozzy matches its gargantuan heft by wailing his way through a lyric sheet that is, fundamentally, a proggy poetic exercise in expressing how totally and completely screwed we are as a species.
Slayer - Hand of Doom
Slayer have been covering this song for decades — it appeared on the second edition of the none-more-‘90s ‘Nativity in Black’ tribute records — but it’s lost little of its grim weight over the years. Released on Sabbath’s iconic ‘Paranoid’ album 55 years ago, it’s always been a perfect fit for the thrash titans’ grand-guignol approach, building from its indelible bass riff and Bill Ward’s skipping drums towards howling solos and harrowing vocal surges that tie in with its discussion of drug dependency among Vietnam veterans, mirroring a nightmarish loss of control. There is so much potential in its slow burn dynamic.
Lzzy Hale - Heaven and Hell
Controversial one, perhaps, but if this is a Sabbath celebration as much as a send off for Ozzy as a live performer, then can we have a little bit of Dio as a treat? Heaven and Hell, the title track from Sabbath’s 1980 album, is a formative text for Lzzy Hale, helping her to switch from keys to guitar in the early days of Halestorm. The rest, as they say, is guitar hero history. “I was trying to figure out riffs I could play without really having a lot of knowledge,” she told Revolver in 2020. “One of the first riffs I learned was Heaven and Hell. That riff, it gave me hope. Like, ‘Awesome! I can play!’”
Alice in Chains - Sweet Leaf
Beyond the sludgy, ruminative foundations they borrowed from Sabbath, Alice in Chains go way back with Ozzy personally. They opened his No More Tours run in the early ‘90s around the time ‘Dirt’ became a breakout record, and eventually snagged the services of his bassist, Mike Inez, who’s still in the band. Back in the day the late Layne Staley did a mean version of Sweet Leaf, ‘Master of Reality’-era Sabbath’s blueprint for stoner rock, and we’re sure William DuVall would cook if Jerry Cantrell decided to dredge the riff up at Villa Park.
Mastodon - Electric Funeral
The debt owed to Sabbath by Mastodon is evident at almost every turn, but rarely has it been brought into focus quite so keenly as the time Brent Hinds joined Marcus King for a lockdown livestream run through of Electric Funeral. Everything about this, from the wish-fulfilment power of Hinds’ vocal to the deliberate feeling he pulls from each halting note in its riff, rules so hard. Seeing it all over again on such a grand, culturally important stage would certainly be a potent reminder of the power music has to influence our own ambitions.
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