Critical acclaim, sold-out shows, a Grammy Award — how does a musician measure their career? For local drummer Brann Dailor, the powerhouse behind the fill-laden rhythms of Atlanta’s Grammy-winning Mastodon, it’s come down to a single moment.
On July 5, the Georgia band was asked to play at a concert unlike any other.
Mastodon was the first to hit the stage in Birmingham, England, for Back to the Beginning, Black Sabbath’s final show, and what also turned out to be frontman Ozzy Osbourne’s last performance before his death on July 22.
“It’s probably the biggest honor of my life, being asked to be a part of that,” Dailor recently told The Atlanta-Journal Constitution. “Bigger than a Grammy, bigger than anything ever before that we’ve had the privilege to be a part of.”
Mastodon is just one of many Georgia musical acts whose music has been molded by the grandfather of heavy metal.
Osbourne, along with Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi and Bill Ward, started Black Sabbath 57 years ago. By April 1979, Osbourne was out of the band. He would go on to have a massive solo career and his own reality show. Including his time with Black Sabbath, he sold 100 million records before his death.
In addition to Mastodon, local acts influenced by the Prince of Darkness include T-Pain, who made waves in 2023 by covering Black Sabbath’s iconic “War Pigs” hit. Osbourne would later call it the “best cover of ‘War Pigs’ ever.”
“Heartbroken by the news,” T-Pain wrote on Instagram after Osbourne’s death. “I was blessed to be able to cover War Pigs and get your recognition. Ozzy Forever.”
For local Grammy-nominated artist John Baizley, frontman of Savannah’s Baroness, Black Sabbath changed everything — even in his quiet Blue Ridge community where he grew up, far from Georgia’s capital.
“We weren’t part of the national touring circuit so we didn’t get a whole lot of live music and we certainly didn’t get a whole lot of contemporary live music anywhere near us when we were growing up,” Baizley told Loudwire back in April.
The Georgia musician learned guitar from a friend’s father, Steve, who was greatly inspired by Black Sabbath.
“One of the first things that he taught me was the riff from ‘Paranoid,’ because that was an important riff to Steve when he was younger, and it also sort of spoke to my generation of kids,” Baizley explained. “We were of the generation that had Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. … Any of those bands that had just an ounce of heaviness, ... that was all coming from Sabbath.”
At the Back to the Beginning show in Birmingham, Dailor said, the love and appreciation for the “great oak tree that is Black Sabbath” were in high supply.
“There were no egos,” Dailor said of the lineup, which also included rock and metal heavy hitters Alice in Chains, Tool and Metallica. “Everybody was just like, ‘We’re here for Sabbath. We’re here for Ozzy. We’re here to participate in this, probably the greatest heavy metal concert of all time, to honor the elders Black Sabbath that gifted us this incredible genre that we all needed and a place that all of us call home.’”
As far as Osbourne’s legacy, Dailor said there’s still much more to unpack.
“His music showed up in samples all over hip-hop” Dailor said. “You know what I mean? And so I think that he just was a cultural icon that kind of blanketed … it didn’t matter what walk of life you came from, it didn’t matter what music scene you were in.
“You’re seeing people from country, from every single genre imaginable, that are honoring this guy, because they love him and that his musical contribution is so immense that it’s not just heavy metal. We feel like we own him, or that he’s our patron saint because we’re metalheads and we’re in heavy metal. But he was everyone’s, you know? You see all the tributes going out from all over the world.”
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