Zakk Wylde Reflects On Reaching His Full Potential Like Rolling Stones And Ozzy Osbourne

Black Label Society frontman Zakk Wylde recently joined an interview on Chaoszine in which he reflected on his process of producing music and topping himself in every album.

Zakk Wylde is both the lead singer and the founder of Black Label Society. He is also the lead guitarist of Ozzy Osbourne, and they have been collaborating for a very long time. Osbourne is now working on his new album, which will be released by spring 2022, and Wylde plays on all the album tracks.

Wylde also has other new projects with his band, Black Label Society. They just released their eleventh studio album, ‘Doom Crew Inc.,’ on November 26, 2021. The new album includes twelve songs, and they had first announced it with the single, ‘Set You Free,’ back in August. The album has a variety of melodies, from heavy metal to southern rock and blues.

In the interview, Zakk Wylde was asked about the production process and how he tries to reach his full potential in every album. He revealed that the sound quality of the future work is really important for him, and he always aims it to be better than the last one.

Wylde also gave some examples from Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath, and AC/DC. He explained that these legendary bands have always tried to top themselves in every album, and they achieved it with amazing songs.

Zakk Wylde said that:

“The joy of writing is writing. You don’t know what you’re going to get. That’s the exciting part about it. If you told Zeppelin, after ‘Led Zeppelin IV’ and after ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ it is like ‘I did it, what more can I do?’ Then in ‘Houses of the Holy,’ Jimmy wrote ‘The Rain Song.’ They had ‘No Quarter,’ there were all these amazing songs on that record. It was like, ‘Wow, I guess you topped yourself on that one.’

Then on the next album, they had ‘Kashmir’ and all these other amazing songs. And the next album was ‘Achilles Last Stand,’ the next album was ‘In The Evening.’ So I’m just saying that you look at the Stones or whatever… It’s just like from ‘Gimme Shelter,’ to all the way up to ‘Start Me Up.’ In that period of their writing, 1965-80, it is like an insane amount of writing.”

He went on to say:

“Or if you look at Sabbath from the first album to ‘Never Say Die!,’ it is just like ‘What are you gonna do next?’ That was the whole thing with Ozzy. What they used to do with Tony, you’re just like ‘How he is gonna top himself?’ But then Lord Iommi would always… Ozzy said he was mindblown. He would come in with all these insane reps, they were just like ‘Oh my God!.’ It was like he was beating his bench press every album, so I mean production-wise, we have our own studio, as far as the production goes, just sonically, you just want to see if you can beat your bench press than from the last one.

You make it sound as great as possible if at worst it sounds as good as the last record if you are really happy with it sonically. It is like AC/DC, after ‘Back in Black,’ after ‘Highway to Hell,’ which sounded amazing. Then the next album was the next step up that from that one sonically. I mean, after that, if there’s no going back, everything has to be at minimal, it has to be as good as that, I mean the sound quality of it. I think you’re going with the intention of that every time.”

You can watch the full interview below.