The year of living dangerously

The Back To The Beginning show features the greatest metal bill ever assembled. Over the next 12 pages, some of the musicians appearing share just what Ozzy and Black Sabbath mean to them

On July 5, Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne will play live for the last time ever. The four members look back on an incredible journey

From drugs, despondency and dead bats to changing the face of modern metal and gaining an unlikely celebrity status, this is the rollercoaster story of Ozzy Osbourne’s solo career

The BLACK SABBATH story will end definitively on July 5, when the band conclude 57 years of sui generis heaviosity and tragi-comic conflict at an epochal mega-gig at Villa Park. Or will it? With less than a month to go, it's still unclear quite how these gallant yet frail septuagenarians make it to the stage... or off it. "We'll probably keel over after two songs!"

Chaos, blood, death, resurrection – Kerry King and Tom Araya look back on the tumultuous journey of the thrash icons who pushed metal to new extremes

In this exclusive roundtable interview, Sabbath superfans Lzzy Hale, Joe Duplantier, Brann Dailor and Randy Blythe bow down before the godfathers of metal