Ozzy Osbourne Says ’13’ ‘Wasn’t Really a Black Sabbath Album’
Ozzy Osbourne has his expressed disappointment in Black Sabbath’s final album, 13.
“To be perfectly honest, I didn’t really get a charge from the album,” Osbourne admitted during a conversation with Stereogum. “Although Rick Rubin is a good friend of mine, I wasn’t really… I was just singing. It was like stepping back in time, but it wasn’t a glorious period. Though Geezer [Butler] did a lot of lyric writing for me, which he’s very, very good at. It wasn’t an earth-shattering experience for me.”
The 2013 LP was the first studio album from Black Sabbath in 18 years, and first with Osbourne since 1978's Never Say Die! Though 13 was a commercial success, it's clear the band was less than thrilled with its creation. Ozzy’s feelings on the LP echo that of Butler, who previously criticized Rubin’s involvement in 13.
“It was a weird experience, especially with being told to forget that you're a heavy metal band,” the bassist explained during an interview with SiriusXM earlier this year. “That was the first thing [that Rubin] said to us. He played us our very first album, and he said, ‘Cast your mind back to then when there was no such thing as heavy metal or anything like that, and pretend it’s the follow-up album to that’ – which is a ridiculous thing to think.”
Despite multiple band members admitting disappointment in 13, Ozzy has little interest in creating another album with Sabbath.
“I would like to say it’s completely done,” the Prince of Darkness told Stereogum. “I think it’s time. The only thing I really regret, to be honest, is that Bill Ward didn’t play on the album. It wasn’t really a Black Sabbath album. I’m not saying that one day we might not all go in a room and come up with the perfect Black Sabbath album. But I’ll say, [13] wasn’t recorded the way Black Sabbath recorded records. We’d gone right back past the point where we took charge, back to when someone else had full control of our recording. Which we never did from Vol. 4 onwards.”