The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee was instrumental in the creation of the heavy metal genre.
Ozzy Osbourne, the vocalist of heavy metal pioneers Black Sabbath, has died. He was 76.
The self-styled Prince of Darkness turned the grim, creeping feeling of late ’60s Birmingham into incredibly influential songs about the occult and the apocalypse. The sludgy and foreboding take on electrified blues music, coupled with sci-fi stories and witch tales, laid the groundwork for decades of hard rock music across nine albums with Black Sabbath.
Osbourne’s last album with Sabbath was more than 20 years in the rearview when he returned to pop culture consciousness in the early aughts. The MTV reality series “The Osbournes” recast the one-time bat-biter as a foul-mouthed and cantankerous middle-aged dad.
