BLACK SABBATH's OZZY OSBOURNE On '13' Chart Success: 'We Were All In Shock'

July 18, 2013

A short video clip of BLACK SABBATH singer Ozzy Osbourne talking to Sky News about the success of the band's new album, "13", can be seen below.

"I can't believe it," Osbourne says in the clip. "It's amazing. We were all in shock. I knew in the back of my mind that one day I wanted to do this. But it's probably the best thing that ever happened to me, for us to break up all of those years ago. This proves that we had something going for us."

Osbourne came up with the title for "God Is Dead?", the current single from the band's new album "13", but bassist Geezer Butler wanted to call it something else. Ozzy told Shortlist, "I was in a doctor's office and there was a magazine in there with that line on the cover. I thought, 'Yeah — people flew planes into the World Trade Center because of God, there's all this fucking shiy going on in the world in the name of God.'" Geezer added, "Ozzy gave me that line, and I wrote the lyrics. I wanted to call the song 'American Jihad'."

Ozzy continued, "Fuck that. I'm the guy at the front singing it; I would have had a fucking army after me . . . In the early days (of BLACK SABBATH),there was a lot of backlash from religious groups . . . I was sent letters written in blood. In my house I must have 25 fucking Bibles, each with a marked-up passage that (the sender) wanted me to read."

Geezer Butler told The Pulse Of Radio what the song was about. "It's about this guy that sets out to prove that God is still alive, and he has this voice in his head saying that God's dead, and he can't get rid of the voice telling him, so he goes out and kills everybody," he said.

"13" debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart last month, the first SABBATH album to ever top the U.S. chart. The CD has sold 239,000 copies in the United States so far, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

The disc features Ozzy, Butler and guitarist Tony Iommi playing together for the first time in 35 years. Their last effort together was 1978's "Never Say Die!"

The band kicks off a North American tour on July 25 in the Woodlands, Texas.

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