War Pigs

Eight years ago I watched Ozzy Osbourne shuffle onstage at London’s Indigo at the O2 to accept the 2018 Metal Hammer Golden God Award.

He did not seem very well. But then again, he never quite did seem well. 

He barked his thanks at the crowd and the organizers and shuffled back off stage. I wanted more from the Prince of Darkness, one of the men responsible for shaping heavy music into what it would become. 

That was the only time I ever saw Ozzy “live”.

…not that I didn’t try again. 

A year ago my uncle and I both “waited in line” (on Ticketmaster) to try and snag tickets for “Back to the Beginning” in Villa Park – what The Guardian described as “metal’s Live Aid”.

No luck. There were tens of thousands before us in the queue for a venue with a 40,000 capacity. 

I moved on. I remember being somewhat aware of the concert happening last July. But since I couldn’t be there, it remained on my periphery. A distant curiosity. 

Then, three weeks later, Ozzy was dead.

“War Pigs” began its life as “Walpurgis”. A full version of “Walpurgis” exists from a recording they did in John Peel’s studio in April, 1970. They had been playing “Walpurgis” for months before it was (re-)recorded as “War Pigs”. The music (guitar, bass, drums) remains the same, but the lyrics are completely different. 

It’s worth digging into “Walpurgis”. The song describes evil in a more literal sense than its future incarnation:

Even from the beginning, heavy metal and horror were intertwined. The Satanic imagery of “Walpurgis” is directly inspired by the horror films from the 1950s and 1960s. According to the Financial Times (which describes “War Pigs” as Black Sabbath’s “magnum opus”), Geezer Butler was a fan of Dennis Wheatley novels (many of which would later be adapted into films by Hammer.)

He started to believe that things were going wrong in his life after refusing an invitation from a Satanist cult who “cursed” the band for slighting them.

Religious fanatics (Christians and self-professed Satanists alike) would confound the horror imagery as something more than it was ever intended to be. 

But Geezer didn't need Dennis Wheatley to find this darkness. Walpurgis Night falls on April 30th. It's the night witches supposedly gather, bonfires are lit and the veil between the living and the dead grows thin. It's observed across northern and central Europe, although it didn't originate there. 

Scholars trace it back to Bealtaine. Bealtaine (which means "bright fire" in Old Irish) was one of the four great seasonal festivals of the Celtic calendar. On the eve of May 1st, communities extinguished every hearth fire in Ireland. Then, from a single sacred bonfire lit on a hilltop, every home would relight their fire from the same flame. According to medieval accounts, it was a night of ritual and protection when the veil between the human world and the spirit world was considered dangerously thin. 

Geezer Butler, a working-class kid from Birmingham with Irish Catholic parents, reached towards a pan-European occult ritual without realising it was a version of something his own ancestors had been doing on hilltops in Ireland for thousands of years.

The shift from “Walpurgis” to “War Pigs” happened after Geezer looked up from the pulp novels he was reading and saw that the real “Satanists” were the ones sending working-class kids like him to die in wars abroad.

Because the Vietnam War still raged in the late 60s/early 70s. Black Sabbath had played gigs in German military bases which served as “halfway homes” for returning American soldiers. After chatting with them, Geezer learned what combat is really about.

In Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), Kubrick put the architects of nuclear annihilation in a war room and let them squabble like children. His generals play with human lives like chess pieces… Without care or remorse. 

In “War Pigs”, these political figures are more explicitly demonic than Kubrick’s absurd characters. The “generals gathered in their masses” aren't just military commanders – they're sorcerers who “conjure” war from a safe remove. The message is clear: real evil is in the day-to-day crimes perpetuated by politicians who make “war just for fun”.

Unlike the works of Dennis Wheatley, there is no “hero” who punishes evil at the end of “War Pigs”. Instead, the end of the song presents us with a scene that seems straight out of “Revelations”:

Ward’s jazz background is considered his “secret weapon”. His drum parts “swing”, giving Black Sabbath a truly unique sound. (Credit to my friend Kevin Rogers for showing me exactly why Bill Ward’s drums sound heavy… but are secretly jazzy.)

You can really hear this jazziness during the opening moments of the song. The song’s unsettling “heaviness” comes from the pairing of Ward’s slow jazz waltz with the feedback from Iommi’s distorted guitar, Geezer’s brooding bassline and the air raid siren that wails in the background. There’s a tension that’s only resolved when the heavy power chords crash down at the end.

While it’s fun to listen to Tony Iommi’s trills and legato flourishes throughout the verses, the drums are doing a lot of work to build the song’s atmosphere. Ward maintains a laid back, funky groove throughout “War Pigs”, but this somehow feels heavier than more “modern metal drums” played at blistering speeds. 

Check out this version below of the song from 1970. 

Live, it sounds heavy. Like, really heavy.

That’s because Ozzy’s singing the final verse of “Walpurgis”, not “War Pigs”. 

He gave us one of the most anticipated heavy metal concerts of 2025, then decided it was time to spread his own bat-like wings and depart us. 

Six months after Ozzy died, the Grammys played "War Pigs" as his eulogy. Played by the somewhat-unlikely supergroup of Post Malone, Slash, Chad Smith, Duff McKagan, and Andrew Watt. The song inspired by “schlocky” horror movie pastiche became the soundtrack to an emotional farewell watched by millions.

And maybe it really was Ozzy’s time. He died as “evil minds” were plotting our “destruction” in their covens. Right before real satanism and actual demonic behaviour would start to be exposed in 2026.

In 2022, Geezer Butler tweeted a cover of “War Pigs” with the caption “Sad that my lyrics remain relevant”. Fifty years later, as bombs fall over the Middle East, it’s clear that the “war machine keeps turning”. 

All we can do is hope for the day when the war pigs crawl on their knees toward judgement, whatever that might be.

Oh, Lord, yeah.

Black Sabbath wrote this as a warning. Nobody listened.

What do you think. Was Ozzy a modern-day prophet? Or just a “madman”? Hit reply and let me know.

Horns up 🤘

Shane
Editor-in-Chief
The Chug Media