Black Sabbath Reuniting for New Album, Tour in 2012

Rumors of the original lineup of Black Sabbath reuniting have been going around, but on Friday, the band declared it official. In a press conference at Whiskey A Go Go, a venue where the band played 41 years ago, the original Black Sabbath lineup – Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward – announced their reunion and plans for the next year.

About getting back together, Osbourne said: "It's just time."

Iommi followed that with: "It’s now or never. We get along great. Everything’s really good."
 

For 2012, the band will be one of the headliners of the Download Festival and will be working on a new album – their first with Osbourne since 1978 – with producer Rick Rubin. According to Iommi, Rubin had been one of the driving forces in getting Black Sabbath together. He told the press: "He phoned us every five minutes.”

Osbourne then replied: "I’ve known Rick for many years. He wanted to do it a long time ago."

Black Sabbath is already rehearsing, and their album is expected to be released in fall 2012. Butler described the sound: "It’s really back to the old Sabbath style and sound."

Iommi tentatively announced a reunion in August. He told the Birmingham Mail: “We’re really looking forward to it and I think the stuff we’ve been writing is really good. It’s all been very hush-hush. Ozzy’s been the worst at trying to hold it back. He’s doing a lot of TV and he’s being asked stuff about a reunion and he’s going 'Well, I never say never.'"

To Billboard.com, Iommi also mentioned about the band playing together again. He said they started playing together: "for a bit of fun, and to see if we could all play. It was good, but it was just purely, 'Let's have a go and see what happens.' "

But, after Iommi’s statement to the Birmingham Mail was interpreted by the press as an official announcement, he back-pedaled, saying: "I'm saddened that a Birmingham journalist whom I trusted has chosen this point in time to take a conversation we had back in June and make it sound like we spoke yesterday about a Black Sabbath reunion. At the time I was supporting the Home of Metal exhibition and was merely speculating, shooting the breeze, on something all of us get asked constantly, 'Are you getting back together?' Thanks to the Internet, it's gone round the world as some sort of 'official' statement on my part, absolute nonsense. To my old pals, Ozzy, Geezer and Bill, sorry about this, I should have known better."