Black Sabbath World Tour for ’13’ Hits Stateside in July
It appears the U.S. will finally see a full-on Black Sabbath reunion tour fronted by Ozzy Osbourne.
The band has encountered setback after setback since first announcing a reunion with Osbourne at the end of 2011, including guitarist Tony Iommi’s cancer diagnosis and drummer Bill Ward dropping out of the reunion over contract disputes.
But the group’s new record 13 is scheduled for release in June, and bassist Geezer Butler said in a recent interview that the band plans on touring for the majority of this year.
“We start at the end of April in New Zealand, then we go to Australia, then Japan,” he told Metal Insider. “June, we’ll be promoting the album, then July and August [is] USA. Then October is South America and Europe in November and December.
The New Zealand, Australia and Japan dates have already been revealed, and run from April 20 to May 12. The latter date is the inaugural Ozzfest Japan festival. Exact dates for the remainder of the tour have not yet been released.
Due to Ward’s departure, Butler also was asked who would be playing drums for the group during the tour, and he may had inadvertently revealed another reunion in the process.
“We’re not sure yet,” he said when asked who will be the drummer. “We don’t know because I think Brad [Wilk]’s got commitments with Rage Against the Machine. So it’ll probably be either Tommy [Clufetos] or Brad, depending on their commitments.”
Wilk played drum on the new record, and Clufetos joined the fold during the group’s live shows last year. But Rage Against the Machine haven’t played together since 2011, and have revealed no future recording or touring plans, though it seems Butler may have just made the announcement for them.
Not too long ago, Rage guitarist Tom Morello told Rolling Stone that the group had no plans to get together anytime soon.
“I consider them brothers and brothers-in-arms, and whether or not we ever play music again in any capacity is unknown,” he said. “There’s no plans, no current direction of anything.”
Black Sabbath is one of my favorite artist. I love his performance. If there is a performance & guitarist Tony Iommi’s and drummer Bill Ward is not there then no body likes that performance. I really appreciate the will pover of guitarist Tony Iommi’s a cancer diagnosis . He is really a great inspiration for other. Well I feel pretty bad about their tours & pans which was not successful. Hope in future they will have successful plans.Thanks for sharing this interesting news with us.