Geezer Butler opened up about the heavy metal influence on his career with Black Sabbath in a new chat with Knotfest. He touched on the genre’s rise with bands like Slipknot in the 1990s and said:
“I was really into metal back then, and it was influencing the stuff I was writing as well. It was amazing to see what new bands were coming out then. And each one had a different version of metal, if you want to call it metal. Different versions, instead of just going on and screaming into the microphone and everything sounding the same. Really good, different bands coming out. Slipknot being one of them, obviously. It was great.”
The bassist noted Fear Factory as a major inspiration for his music back then:
“I really liked Fear Factory at the time and I’d been writing all this stuff that was too heavy for Sabbath or Ozzy. Pedro [Howse, guitarist], my nephew, had this band called Crazy Angel, who were like an ultra-thrash band. So when me and him got writing together it came out ultra-heavy, and I wasn’t restricted to what lyrics I was going to write about. A lot of it is about science fiction – a bit like what’s going on now with the AI stuff and everything.”
Will Butler Reunite With Founding Members For New Black Sabbath Material?
Geezer Butler’s run with Black Sabbath ended when the band broke up after a farewell tour in 2017. Ozzy Osbourne recently showed interest in a reunion for a surprise show with all of the original members, but the bassist said he wasn’t sure about it:
“Uh, I don’t think so, no. I mean, it’d be great if we could, you know, to have Bill Ward involved in it, ’cause we didn’t have Bill on the last tour that we did or the last album. Ozzy was asking me what I thought doing, like, maybe two or three songs with Bill in the band when Ozzy does his farewell gig, and I’d do it. But it’s up to Tony [Iommi] and Bill whether they’d do. I don’t know.”
Tony Iommi also said he was open to a comeback but noted in an interview with Eddie Trunk:
“It’d be a nice idea, but you’re gonna get everybody going, ‘Oh, they’re doing it for the money. They’re doing it for this, they’re doing it for that.’ Well, it wouldn’t be. I mean, it’d be something that’d be a nice thing to actually do, but whether it happens will be another thing. But we’ll see. I mean, who knows?”
Bill Ward made it clear a few years ago that he would no longer tour, although he’d be up for a new studio record with Black Sabbath.
