Black Sabbath couldn’t have asked for a better final chapter to their career. Ozzy Osbourne had one more big moment in the sun in 2025, performing one last time in Birmingham, England. Despite his battle with Parkinson’s disease, his voice was as powerful as it was in his prime. All the original members came together one last time to rock out in celebration of the legendary rocker.
However, before he passed away, Ozzy Osbourne wasn’t quite ready to hang it up. According to Zakk Wylde, he wanted to do one last record before calling it quits for good. “‘Zakk, let’s do another record,’” Wylde recalled Osbourne telling him. “’Because I really loved it when you were going through your Allman Brothers, Skynyrd phase when we did ‘No More Tears’. It’s heavy, but it’s more melodic. It’s not pummeling heavy.’”
So if Ozzy Osbourne was down for one last record, could we have expected one more Black Sabbath album with the original crew? For Tony Iommi, he was firmly out on the idea. In an interview with Classic Rock (captured by Louder Sound), he recalled producer Andrew Watt approaching him for one last Sabbath record. Since he’d already been working with Osbourne on his last two albums in 2020 and 2022, why not get the band back together?
Ultimately, Iommi just didn’t really gel with the producer. Moreover, after a tumultuous final album where drummer Bill Ward backed out, the guitarist didn’t want to deal with the headache again.
Tony Iommi Shut Down the Idea of One More Black Sabbath Album Before Ozzy Osbourne Passed Away
“I’d met Andrew Watt when he was producing Ozzy,” Iommi told the publication. “He was very keen and a bit too excited. He also didn’t know what it was like working with the original Sabbath, working with Bill. Also, we’d done 13, and I didn’t like the idea of: ‘Now here’s another album.’”
All things considered, Ozzy Osbourne didn’t seem to have a problem recording with Black Sabbath like Iommi did. In another conversation with Classic Rock back in 2014, Osbourne loved that the crew was all business that time around.
“The whole Sabbath experience this time around was great,” he said. “We all made friends, we didn’t f**k around, we all knew that we had a job to do, and we did it. It was a lot of fun. So we’re going to do one more album, and a final tour.”
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