After releasing a series of teaser videos and dropping quotes like, “This Black Sabbath album is quite possibly the most important album of my career,” the elder gods of heavy metal, Black Sabbath, are finally ready to unveil the first single from 13, the band’s upcoming album and first full-length with Ozzy Osbourne singing vocals in 35 years.
The Birmingham band, formed in 1969, have chosen a debut method befitting their age: Sabbath will premiere 13‘s upcoming single, “End of the Beginning,” during the May 15 season finale of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. As a press release points out, the Master of Reality rockers will perform the song while CSI stars Ted Danson and Marc Vann attend a Black Sabbath show in the midst of investigating “a trail of murders with horrifying similarities to the sins in Dante’s Inferno.” Seriously.
Executive producer Don McGill insists that the pairing makes sense — fans just have to look at the numbers. “Seeing as the album is titled 13 and this is the finale of CSI’s Season 13, it seemed like the perfect match,” McGill said in a statement.
CBS famously skews towards an older audience (54 is the new 49, after all) and the men of Black Sabbath, while still completely capable of crafting songs and probably still very terrifying, are entering life’s golden years. Ozzy Osbourne is 64, Tony Iommi is 65, and Geezer Butler is 63; the youngest guy in this band goes by the name “Geezer.”
Despire their advanced ages, Sabbath dug deep into their past for the pending 13. “We originally were a jazz-blues band,” Osbourne has said. “On the first album, it was very bluesy, very jammy, and that’s what [producer Rick Rubin] wanted. He didn’t want the songs to be verse, chorus, verse, chorus, middle eight, bridge — he wanted it to flow.”
Fans can wade into that flow on May 15 when the CSI finale airs on CBS, and then dive into 13 fully on its June 11 release date. Pre-orders (in CD and vinyl formats) are currently available through Black Sabbath’s website.
