GEEZER BUTLER Is 'Using An A.I. Singer' During Songwriting Process For His Upcoming Solo Album: 'It's Really Helped Me', He Says

During a question-and-answer session at the 2025 Steel City Con, which was held December 5-7, 2025 in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, legendary BLACK SABBATH bassist Geezer Butler was asked if he has any more solo albums "in the tank". He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Oh, gosh. I've got tons of stuff. Since we finished the last SABBATH show [at 'Back To The Beginning' in July 2025], I've just been going through all the stuff that I've written since the '80s onwards and updating everything. And what held me back before, I didn't have a singer when I'm at home, but A.I. [artificial intelligence] came along. [Laughs] So all my songs now, I've updated them all and I'm using an A.I. singer to bring all the lyrics out. So now I can take it to singers that I'm gonna be working with and go, 'This is what I want on the album,' so they've got a better idea. Before I was just, like, playing them a bass riff or something, going, 'Can you sing to this?' And they'd be going, 'Yeah.' [Laughs] But it's so much better now, 'cause you can sit in your studio and do everything on A.I. and then take it to proper musicians and let them take over. It's really helped me. A lot of people think it's cheating."

Asked what his songwriting process is like, Geezer said: "With SABBATH — SABBATH, we'd sit down in a room together and just jam and jam and jam until somebody came up with something that we could work with. Once we had a good riff to write to, we'd finish the music part of it. Ozzy [Osbourne, SABBATH vocalist] would sing his vocal line, then I'd write the lyrics. So it mainly came from jamming."

The nineties were a testing time for many of rock's iconic leaders of the seventies. The nostalgia era that is now an industry of its own had yet to really come to prominence and many of the musicians who were there at rock's dawn were left floundering as the new decade rolled around and an innovative and fresh wave of "alternative" rock dominated the music world.

1995 saw the release of Geezer's first solo album, "Plastic Planet", followed in 1997 by "Black Science", with "Ohmwork" completing the trilogy in 2005. In October 2020, all three albums were made available for the first time ever on vinyl via BMG, with both CD and LP using newly updated cover artwork.

"Plastic Planet" was originally released under the name G/Z/R and featured Burton C. Bell of Californian industrial/groove metal pioneers FEAR FACTORY on vocals and is considered a classic of '90s metal. The album perfectly melded Geezer's roots in doomy blues rock to the industrial influenced metal sound that was a key element in pushing the genre forward in the nineties.

Alongside Bell for this recording was a long-time collaborator of Geezer's, Peter Howse (nicknamed "Pedro" by Butler, from a character in the TV show "Four Feather Falls"). Howse was a founding member of the GEEZER BUTLER BAND in 1985, and has written and played in all versions of GZR/GEEZER. Drums were handled by Deen Castronovo, providing the pounding rhythms that propel the heavy grooves and mechanical metallic edge on "Plastic Planet". Lyrically, Butler channelled technological, sci-fi and dystopian subjects mixed with the social issues tackled on "Drive Boy, Shooting" and "The Invisible", themes that perfectly matched the then futuristic sounds within.

Returning in 1997 with "Black Science" and originally released this time under the name GEEZER, this album saw Butler once again working with drummer Deen Castronovo and guitarist Pedro Howse, and like "Plastic Planet", was produced by Butler and Paul Northfield (RUSH, ALICE COOPER, SUICIDAL TENDENCIES, DREAM THEATER). Bell was unable to provide vocals this time due to commitments with FEAR FACTORY, but his industrial boots were more than adequality filled by the then completely unknown Clark Brown who stepped up to the plate and delivered an impressively powerful vocal performance over the album's high-energy and heavy power grooves.

It wouldn't be until 2005 that Geezer would get the chance to continue his solo explorations, having returned to SABBATH for the 1997 edition of Ozzfest, remaining in the band ever since, but in 2005 he released "Ohmwork", this time under the name GZR. Once again, the recording was undertaken with Clark Brown on vocals and Pedro Howse on guitar, the difference this time being that drum duties were handled by Chad E. Smith (the veteran St. Louis drummer, not the RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS percussionist of the same name).

With "Ohmwork", gone were the industrial metal influences of the previous decade, but Butler still steadfastly refused to hark back to the past and kept everything contemporary, drawing on influences, as a keen follower of music, on everything that was happening in rock at the time. From the pedal to the metal of "Aural Sects" to the epic, neo-psychedelia of "I Believe", "Ohmwork" was a fitting finale to Geezer's solo album trilogy.

A founding member of BLACK SABBATH, Butler is also the lyricist of such SABBATH classics as "War Pigs", "Iron Man", "Paranoid" and others.

At the aforementioned "Back To The Beginning" concert, Ozzy and the other original SABBATH members performed four songs for more than 40,000 people at Villa Park in the band's original hometown of Birmingham, United Kingdom and 5.8 million more on a livestream. Ozzy also played a five-song solo set while seated in a bat-adorned throne.

Geezer's autobiography, "Into The Void: From Birth To Black Sabbath - And Beyond", arrived in June 2023 in North America via HarperCollins imprint Dey Street Books.