Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor says that Black Sabbath provided the “blueprint” for other heavy metal acts.
The Paranoid rockers – fronted by Ozzy Osbourne – will play their final gig at the Back to the Beginning concert at Birmingham’s Villa Park on Saturday (05.07.25) and Taylor has hailed the band as pioneers of the genre.
Corey told BBC News: “Sabbath gave us the blueprint, Sabbath gave us the recipe. They gave us the cookbook, man.
“The mystique was in the lyrics. It was in the sound. It was in the way that everything was just a little darker.”
Taylor describes Black Sabbath’s eponymous track – which was released on the band’s debut album in 1970 – as “one of the scariest songs I’ve ever heard” and plays the record whenever he “wants to go someplace mentally”.
The 51-year-old musician said: “I don’t have to look for, you know, (The Omen’s) Damien Thorn. I don’t have to look for Mercyful Fate.
“I go back to the beginning. I go back to Black Sabbath, the song and the rest is history.”
The rockers are bowing out in fitting style in their home city of Birmingham and Corey thinks that the area has been a key influence on their work – just as the US state of Iowa has been for Slipknot.
He said: “One hundred per cent Iowa is the reason why Slipknot was Slipknot and the Midlands are absolutely the reason Sabbath was Sabbath.
“You are where you come from.”
Halestorm are amongst the plethora of acts performing at Black Sabbath’s farewell concert and frontwoman Lzzy Hale claims that she would not be the artist she is today without the influence of The Wizard rockers.
She explained: “For whatever reason Black Sabbath caught me early on and it was something that I didn’t even know how to describe, but I understood it.”
Lzzy says it was inconceivable for her to be sharing the bill with Black Sabbath for their final gig – which will see the original line-up of Ozzy, Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi and Bill Ward perform together for the first time in 20 years.
She said: “(It) wasn’t even on my bucket list of dreams, because it was an indefatigable dream to even consider because it was impossible.”