Stephen King’s love affair with heavy metal has been well-documented over the decades. Whether blasting Metallica, Anthrax, or AC/DC while writing, or inspiring bands through his legendary novels, King’s influence on the metal world is almost symbiotic. But what about Black Sabbath—the inventors of heavy metal itself? Turns out, King’s feelings about Sabbath, and Ozzy Osbourne in particular, are a little more complicated.
King has always proudly worn his metal fandom on his sleeve. He was reportedly a card-carrying member of the Metallica fan club back in the ‘80s and has name-dropped Anthrax in several of his books. Fittingly, that admiration is mutual. Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett famously named Ride the Lightning after a passage from King’s The Stand, and Anthrax’s Scott Ian is such a superfan he wrote the foreword to one edition of the same novel.
Yet despite being a die-hard metalhead, King has been brutally honest about his take on Black Sabbath. “I never cared for Ozzy very much,” King once told The Atlantic Monthly. “Black Sabbath don’t really work for me.”
Given that, it came as a shock when King named an Ozzy solo album—Black Rain—as his favorite metal release of 2007. However, it might not have been the glowing endorsement it sounded like at first. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, King admitted that 2007 was such a lackluster year for music that he struggled to even fill out a Top 10 list. Still, king praised Ozzy’s effort, writing, “It’s amazing that Ozzy can do this sort of thing at all anymore, let alone so well. Finest heavy metal record of the year; a true speaker-buster. Best track is the amazing ‘I Don’t Wanna Stop.’”
‘I Don’t Wanna Stop’ quickly became the signature hit from Black Rain, snagging a Grammy nomination for ‘Best Hard Rock Performance’ (losing to Foo Fighters’ The Pretender) and showing up everywhere from Jimmy Kimmel Live! to Rock Band and WWE’s Judgment Day.
But King wasn’t done. In typical fashion, he couldn’t resist throwing a jab—this time at Slipknot. After praising Ozzy, King closed out his review with: “Slipknot, eat your filthy little heart out.”
Why King took a random shot at Slipknot—who didn’t even release an album that year—remains a mystery. It’s a surprising move, especially considering Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor is a known King superfan who proudly admits to rereading The Stand every two years. Tough break for Corey!
