Black Sabbath – ‘War Pigs’

Of all the places I expected Ozzy Osbourne’s career-defining band to turn up years after their original line-up disbanded, hip-hop was certainly not one of them. But the world works in mysterious ways, and hearing the riff from ‘War Pigs’ being sampled like heavy metal was only just discovered is certainly a demonstration of that. First up, the opening strains of Girl Talk’s recently released mash-up opus ‘All Day’ marries the central groove of this track with Ludacris’ ‘Move Bitch’ to great comic effect. Then three days later, OAD are in attendance as Pharoahe Monch drops the same groove in his unbelievably powerful live set. Finally, Puff Daddy references Osbourne in the hilarious Get Him to The Greek, which admittedly was released a while ago but I only saw last night, screaming “‘British rockstars don’t die! Ozzy Osbourne, that motherfucker’s gon’ outlive Miley Cyrus…”

So ‘War Pigs’ is in vogue for sampling, but in reality, it’s a fantastically overblown rock song. The bit that you hear in both of the above tracks hits at about the 1 minute mark, but not before Ozzy’s guitarist Tommy Iommi lays on a solo that, if it were an ocean, you could drown in. As overindulgent as it may be, I kind of like it. If Girl Talk’s career has proven anything, it’s that we live in a world fuelled by two things; ADD and instant gratification. That 59 seconds of vamping is crucial to actually focusing the listener’s attention, and it makes what comes after it, including Ozzy’s blood curdling scream “Generals gathered in their mass-es…..’ that much more devastating. In 1970, there wasn’t a lot of studio trickery you could pull out of the bag, which means that the eight minutes of absolute fist-pumping brilliance that you hear on ‘War Pigs’ is all real. Drum solos, guitar shreds, arching vocals, none of that shit is auto-tuned or beat-matched, it’s just pure rock and/or roll.

I was introduced to Black Sabbath when I started a British heavy metal covers band in highschool with a few friends of mine who were absolute Ozzy tragics. Da, the redheaded Hungarian-Romanian guitarist buddy of mine who dropped ‘Babe I’m Gonna Leave You‘ on me the first time he came round to jam, was a huge lover of ‘War Pigs’, and we practised and practised until we had the whole thing down, section changes, solos and all. I think you can only really appreciate songs like this when you’ve nutted out all the small details and learned how to play it back to front. It’s at this point that you realise how incredibly talented some of those old rockers were. And though Ozzy’s done a pretty swell job of turning himself into a reality TV joke and science experiment, the fact remains that Black Sabbath remain a seminal act in rock music history. And if you need proof of the band’s enduring effect, there’s better place to start than in hip-hop.

Black Sabbath – ‘War Pigs’

Have some darkness with the most sacred day of the week here.