Metal
Geezer Butler walked on stage on Saturday 3 October at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland, to play “War Pigs” with Jack Sabbath, the Black Sabbath covers band fronted by Jack Black. The occasion was Power To The People, the festival Tom Morello curates.
Jack Sabbath played three songs there: Ozzy Osbourne’s “Mr. Crowley”, Black Sabbath’s “The Wizard” and “War Pigs” with Butler. The line-up is completed by Roman Morello, Tom Morello’s son, on guitar; Revel Ian, son of Anthrax’s Scott Ian, on bass; Japanese drummer Yoyoka Soma; and Hugo Weiss on keyboards.
Black has described more than once how he found Osbourne. “I went to this record store, and I was going to get the new Journey album,” he told George Lopez. “I was ten years old or something, and there was this kid who was 14, and he said, ‘No, man. You don’t want that. Get this,’ and he showed me Ozzy Osbourne’s ‘Blizzard Of Ozz’. It just changed my whole brain, the passion and the darkness and the evil of the music.”
Black and Roman Morello had already played “Mr. Crowley” together in October 2023, at the 100th birthday celebrations for Tom Morello’s mother, Mary Morello. And at last year’s “Back To The Beginning” Black sang his version in a pre-taped video, also with Roman Morello and Revel Ian.
That “Back To The Beginning” took place on 5 July 2025 at Villa Park in Birmingham, and it was the last time Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Butler and Bill Ward played together. They did four songs, and the first was “War Pigs”.
Text by Roger Estivill