Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath is a British hard rock band, formed in Birmingham in 1968. It is often considered today, as much by the specialized press as by the contemporary public, as one of the founding bands and precursors of heavy metal, even as the first band of this kind of music. Black Sabbath's original lineup consisted of Anthony "Tony" Iommi on guitar, John Michael "Ozzy" Osbourne on vocals (who would later switch back and forth between the band and his solo career), Terence "Geezer" Butler on bass and William "Bill" Ward on drums. However, the band underwent several reorganizations, with nearly twenty former members, including Ronnie James Dio, Tony Martin, Ian Gillan, Cozy Powell and Glenn Hughes. Tony Iommi is the only member who has been around since the beginning without interruption. The inventor of the heavy and gloomy riff, perfectly in phase with its "dark" style, the band owes a lot to the guitar playing developed by Tony Iommi, whose two fingers had been severed during an accident in his previous job as a metal worker. Black Sabbath remains a dominant influence in the heavy metal scene, and its first ten albums are considered classics of the genre; in particular, Paranoid and Heaven and Hell, both of which went multi-platinum. In addition, MTV ranks Black Sabbath as the number one band in metal. In 2014, the band counts more than a hundred million albums sold worldwide. The group separates in 2017, after a final tour.