I really fail to see the humour in this. What the hell is funny about the most legendary metal band making asses of themselves?

I feel sad to see the Sabbath reunion becoming a bit of a soap opera on the internet. It has been a very tough year for us as a band, having announced our reunion plans, only for Tony to be diagnosed with lymphoma, leaving us no choice but to postpone the proposed Sabbath tour, and then for Bill to go public on his site about an un-signable contract. None of us knew how Tony was going to respond to his intensive chemo therapy, and radiotherapy. Ozzy and myself flew to England to be with Tony, and on his “good” days, we’d meet at his home studio and put ideas together for the upcoming album, all sitting down together, no drummer involved, just 3 of us quietly putting together ideas. We thought that when we had enough songs together for a full band rehearsal, we’d move back to L.A and put the whole thing together with Bill. Unfortunately, to our surprise, Bill issued a statement on his site saying he’d been offered an un-signable contract. He hadn’t told any one of us he was having contractual problems, and frankly those things are worked out between our representatives, and never between the four of us let alone in public. We had the idea of keeping just one show in this year, hoping that Tony would be well enough for that show, and that things with Bill would be sorted. As you may expect, a one off show at Donnington Festival (Download) costs an absolute fortune to stage, involving over 50 people, transport, air fares, hotels, meals, agents, promotors, accountants, lawyers etc, so none of us, expected to make much money from it- it was a one off Sabbath show for the fans, before we go into recording the new album. Apparently, this wasn’t acceptable to Bill’s representatives, they wanted an amount that was so unrealistic that it seemed to have been a joke. So we resigned ourselves to doing Download without Bill, hoping he’d change his mind and at least make a guest appearance. We started rehearsals a few weeks ago with Tommy Cluefetos, the drummer who will be on the Ozzy and Friends Tour. Brilliant drummer and good bloke. It was decided we’d better do a warm up show, to break the ice since we haven’t played together live. The O2 Academy was available in Birmingham, where we were rehearsing, so we decided on that, and to make a donation to Help For Heroes Charity, since we’d be ironing out any glitches we may have. Then Bill put out a further statement saying he’d been ready to play the Birmingham show , but he was expected to have to do it “for free”- well, I think that’s basically how you raise money from gigs for charity – you play them “for free”.

All I am saying is that there are two sides to everything. I do hope to play with Bill again some day. For whatever reason; it wasn’t meant to be this time. Bill’s made his decision, and I have to respect that. Hopefully this painful year will be worth the wait for the new Sabbath album and end in joy and happiness for all.

Stay frosty,
Geezer

This is getting worse: They removed from the website ALL Dio and Tony Martin albums from the discography!

WTF! This has no excuse. Are Ozzy and co trying to reinvent history and pretend that without him there was no Sabbath?

Hahaha, what a fucking joke. Please let this band die a graceful death, Ozzy, if you have a shred of decency in you.

This is getting worse: They removed from the website ALL Dio and Tony Martin albums from the discography!

WTF! This has no excuse. Are Ozzy and co trying to reinvent history and pretend that without him there was no Sabbath?

Anyone remember this? http://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/ ... ell-216195

Kinda weird reading this now.

"But the main reason inside everything was that Tony, on one of the songs, it was a pretty fast song, was pushing his guitar - it was just like a down beat - and in all the years that I've played with him, since I was, like, 16 - me and him have played together a long, long time - I've never cut across him.

"In other words, I never go through him - I don't travel through him, I travel around him, and I either build or I pull away, or I make holes, or I do whatever I can do to make sure that I am interacting with the bass and the guitar in the way that I do it. It was requested of me to play a straight beat through, and playing a straight beat through was absolutely against everything I know about drumming, and it was an intolerable request. End of story. I can't do that, and I'm not gonna do that to Tony."

Same. There is nothing to laugh about here, not even with a "oh look how childish they are" mentality, this was the last chance Black Sabbath had and now it's all over, spoiled because someone couldn't make or agree to sensible terms for Bill Ward. This is sickening and rage-inducing. Like I have to take a moment to calm myself down and not start a riot - that's the hatred I feel. Not even cancer could wake these selfish fools up and make them stop taking life for granted. This is beyond distasteful, this is absolutely heartless behaviour. I never really stand behind boycotting, but damn me if it isn't justified now.

Some vids appeared in YT.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZKcgqYG ... r_embedded

Ozzy sounds like shit, as expected.

http://www.examiner.com/article/addendum-to-the-missing-black-sabbath-drummer-caper

Huh.

http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/black-sabbath/2012/o2-academy-birmingham-birmingham-england-43df93a7.html

Quite an awesome setlist tho. Only stuff from their first four albums, except for a Symptom tease and Dirty Women (which I never heard). Also, the entire A-side of the debut!

I don't think they play Symptom with Ozzy singing, even when they reunited with him in 1997.

Taking the other albums off the website? Well, obviously the marketing dudes behind Sabbath have seen fit that, due to what they are currently promoting is a return of the original line-up

The full-blown reunion isn't going as planned, and it isn't as if they are marketing it as something that it isn't.

To erase the Dio and Martin albums from the Sabbath discography it's not just wrong, but completely disrespectful towards them and the fans. [...] Btw, where are the feelings towards Dio? wasn't every single of them very sad about his passing, telling countless times how much they missed him? Well, looks like they miss him so much that decided to blatantly remove him from the Sabbath history (an absurdly re-written history).

Don't take it for something that it's not. It's an ill-considered (and admittedly tasteless) marketing move that was probably decided by their management or whoever runs the website, not the band themselves. It has nothing to do with "rewriting the Sabbath history". I wouldn't waste too much thought on it.

Man, don't try to justify it. To erase the Dio and Martin albums from the Sabbath discography it's not just wrong, but completely disrespectful towards them and the fans. Heaven and Hell could have been called Sabbath if weren't for the Ozzy's legal stuff, as all of them stated back in the day. Also, I clearly remember when Geezer said he won't be working with Ozzy again and having Dio fronting Sabbath (cause he and Dio said 'this is Sabbath, call it whatever you want) was way more comfortable, even that, if he had to play with Ozzy we won't be as collaborative as with Dio fronting the band. Also, if Dio was still alive to these days, this fraud of reunion would have never existed, H&H would have been still touring and probably releasing albums (well, so much bullshit have been said, like Iommi calling 'The Devil You Know' the last Sabbath statement and stuff like that).

Btw, where are the feelings towards Dio? wasn't every single of them very sad about his passing, telling countless times how much they missed him? Well, looks like they miss him so much that decided to blatantly remove him from the Sabbath history (an absurdly re-written history).