Earliest Black Sabbath was nothing if not a coalescing of various elements into a cohesive whole. A kind of cultural distillation, ground down and remade into the singular most formative basis of doom — the album Black Sabbath. Only months later in 1970, they released Paranoid and refined the darkness of the first record, adding range and sonic breadth. While the title-track became the band’s signature piece, “Electric Funeral” and “Fairies Wear Boots” grew into the anthems of a subculture within a subculture, and they remain so to this day.

However, every time I put on Master of Reality and listen to it straight through, with each successive track, I say to myself, “This is the heaviest shit ever made.” And each song proves the prior assessment wrong — yes, even “Solitude” — until finally, “Into the Void” offers clear and indisputable truth of riff. It is pure in its muck, and as perfect as stoner rock has ever gotten. The standard by which the genre is and should be measured: the heaviest shit ever made.

But what about Vol. 4? It seems to have an answer for every challenge Master of Reality throws at it. A “Snowblind” for “Sweet Leaf,” “Supernaut” for “Into the Void,” “Under the Sun/Every Day Comes and Goes” for “Lord of this World.” 1972 found Black Sabbath a more realized beast with a perfected heavy rock that seemed to already know the tropes of the metal genre it was shaping.

I could go on. I won’t. Is “Changes” enough to hold back Vol. 4 from standing up to Master of Reality? There are people who consider “Solitude” a misstep of similar magnitude. I leave it to you to decide in the comments.

You know the scenario. You can only pick one, so which is it?

Legendary Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi has been diagnosed with the early stages of lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphocytes, a type of cell that forms part of the immune system.

Iommi, 63, is currently working with his doctors to establish the best treatment plan and remains upbeat and determined to make a full and successful recovery.

This comes as Black Sabbath — Ozzy Osbourne (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar), Geezer Butler (bass) and Bill Ward (drums) — are writing and recording their first album in 33 years in Los Angeles (still set for release this fall) with producer Rick Rubin. They will now go to the UK to continue to work with Tony.

If you’re reading this and you celebrate either the Jesus-in-Christmas or the secularized Xmas, then chances are congratulations are in order: You’ve made it through another one. The Patient Mrs. and I got back a little bit ago from the last of the familial hoedowns, and with that, an episode of Iron Chef America and our collected loot strewn about the place in Roman-style excess, the evening seems to have come to a conclusion. I hope you had a good one.

Since Friday was my office party and — class act that I am — I got loaded early, I never officially closed out the week, and I thought some Blue Cheer would be the way to go. In the car up to Connecticut and back yesterday and today it was Deep Purple, Sungrazer, Warning and Kyuss, but holiday Cheer is about as close as I get to holiday cheer, so I hope you enjoy it. I haven’t drooled over Outsideinside in a couple weeks anyway, so I’m due.

If you’re in the US and don’t have to work tomorrow, I hope your weekend continues to be excellent and that you get to relax a bit before having to cram five days’ worth of work into four the rest of this week. If Xmas isn’t in line with either your belief system, you’re celebrating Hanukkah, Lemmy‘s birthday, something else or nothing at all, I hope you had a good weekend whatever it may have entailed.

Along with a shit-ton of laundry, tomorrow I’m going to try to make my way through reviewing the new BeenObscene album, and this week I’ll have Six Dumb Questions with guitarist/graphic artist Scott Stearns of the recently-reviewed Bibilic Blood and the semi-recently-reviewed Morbid Wizard, as well as, I think some new music from Dwellers, who were reviewed just a couple days ago. Very timely around here all of a sudden.

In any case, much fun to come this week, so please, stay tuned. In the meantime, see you on the forum and back here tomorrow for more good times.

Saint Vitus‘ Saint Vitus flew directly in the face of what was expected both of SST and of the SoCal underground. It was slow, it was lurching, and it was miserable. Saint Vitus did not have Black Flag‘s sense of self-righteous social rage — they had slow suicide with booze and pills. Their message was not of rising above, but of being buried at sea. Scott Reagers‘ vocals remain a blueprint for doom singers to follow, but try as so many do, the same black magic has never managed to be captured. Together with the foreboding bass of Mark Adams, the noise-infected guitar of Dave Chandler and Armando Acosta‘s unbreakable plod, the combination of elements was overwhelming. Even now, listening to Saint Vitus makes you feel like you’re drowning in it.

But if Chandler‘s guitar tone ever had a rival in that era, it came from Victor Griffin. One listen to the churning malevolence of “All Your Sins,” and there’s no question you’re hearing some of the most wretched doom since Sabbath‘s heyday. As much as Pentagram came to be known later for frontman Bobby Liebling‘s fabled drug addiction and a constantly rotating lineup, with Griffin, drummer Joe Hasselvander and bassist Martin Swaney (who had performed together as the trio Death Row), the band’s overdue first full-length was a milestone, and 26 years after its release, the title Relentless feels no less appropriate. “Sign of the Wolf,” “The Ghoul,” “Relentless,” “20 Buck Spin” — these are the standards by which we measure what doom has become since.

I could go on at length about both these records, but you get the point. Here’s what it boils down to: Two epics, two black covers, two of American doom’s greatest, and you’ve got to pick one. Damned if I can choose, but if you’re feeling more decisive, please, have at it in the comments.

Mike H.

That said, any excuse to see Geezer Butler play bass is good enough for me…

Here’s the news, pilfered from the above-mentioned industry trade:

Black Sabbath is reuniting to record its first studio album with original frontman Ozzy Osbourne since 1978, and will support it with a massive 2012 tour, sources have confirmed to Billboard.com.

The group made the announcement during a press conference today (Nov. 11) at the Whiskey A-Go-Go in Los Angeles, where Sabbath played its first show in the city exactly 41 years ago. Black Sabbath will headline Download Festival, which will take place between June 8-10 in Donington Park, England. Meanwhile, Rick Rubin will produce the group’s comeback album, which is expected to be released in fall 2012 through Vertigo/Universal.

Rumors of new Sabbath activity have been swirling for months, with Osbourne recently telling Billboard.com that new material was “a very, very strong possibility. It’s in the very early stages, so we haven’t recorded anything yet.”

Guitarist Tony Iommi, who wrote extensively about the band in his new book Iron Man: My Journey Through Heaven & Hell With Black Sabbath, also told Billboard.com that he regrouped with Osbourne, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward at Osbourne‘s California home earlier this year to play some music, “For a bit of fun, and to see if we could all play. It was good, but it was just purely, ‘Let’s have a go and see what happens.’”

I know Motörhead doesn’t get mentioned much around here. In a way, I feel like it’s not necessary. They’re Motörhead. They do Motörhead stuff. They’re louder than everyone, Lemmy is the king of the badasses, etc. It’s all been said. If Motörhead was going to put out a flamenco album or something, I’d probably talk about it, but otherwise, aren’t they kind of a given?

“(I Won’t) Pay Your Price” might seem like a random pick. It’s not “Stay Clean” or “Ace of Spades,” or whatever, but as I shelled out just over two grand this morning for sundry car repairs, I feel like it’s a pretty decent summation of how I was doing while signing that check, “Fast” Eddie Clarke solo and all. Some things you just feel in your gut.

Despite those auspicious beginnings, as far as an end to a chaotic week, today wasn’t so bad. I wanted terribly to transcribe the Black Cobra interview, and I just didn’t have time to do it. Doubtful that anyone else gives a crap, but I’d said I was going to do it, and it matters to me. I tried. The last three days, I tried. And it just didn’t happen.

What that means is this coming week, I’ll double up and have both that and my interview with Scott Hill from Fu Manchu about their recent reissues and tours playing In Search Of in its entirety. Stay tuned for those, and I’ll also have a track premiere from the new Esoteric record on Tuesday — weird as ever, but ultra-doomed — and reviews of Drone Throne, Samsara Blues Experiment, Electric Moon and Obrero.

Assuming I survive the Octobersnowpocalypse that all weather reports seem to be crapping their pants over in sensationalist panic, we’ll also wrap up the month of October and do the numbers and the rundown of what’s to come, and I can only imagine there’ll be Roadburn news and much more as well.

In the meantime, congratulations to any fans of the St. Louis Cardinals on that whole World Series thing, and I hope wherever you are, you have a great and safe weekend. See you on the forum and back here Monday. Huzzah.

Taking youthful cues from Yawning Man, punk rock and other outfits from their home in the Californian desert, the four-piece of vocalist John Garcia, guitarist Josh Homme, bassist Nick Oliveri and drummer Brant Bjork set a spontaneous-sounding course, and the generator parties in the desert wilds have become the stuff of YouTube legend, capturing an unconcerned lack of self-awareness that’s straight out of classic rock. That is, in the true spirit of innovation, they didn’t purport to be changing anything at the time.

Inevitable lineup shifts saw the departure of Oliveri and eventually Bjork, with The Obsessed‘s Scott Reeder coming in on bass for Welcome to Sky Valley in 1994 and drummer Alfredo Hernandez (Yawning Man) replacing Bjork on …And the Circus Leaves Town the next year. Kyuss continued to tour and gain popularity, but ultimately came apart, releasing their last studio offering in the form of a 1997 Man’s Ruin Records split with Homme and Oliveri‘s new outfit, Queens of the Stone Age.

The poorly-titled compilation of rare tracks Muchas Gracias: The Best of Kyuss hit in 2000, and for a full decade, Kyuss‘ legacy was left to fester. Queens of the Stone Age hit big commercially, Brant Bjork amassed a catalog of incredibly underrated solo albums, and Garcia found outlets in the form of Slo Burn (whose EP, Amusing the Amazing, was stellar), the Rick Rubin-produced Unida (whose breakthrough album was unfortunately shelved and never saw official release), and Hermano (currently on hold after three records, including the boldly self-exploratory 2007 effort …Into the Exam Room), but eventually came to recognize family and his career in veterinary diagnostics as his main priorities.

The outfit Garcia Plays Kyuss was announced for the 2010 Roadburn Festival in The Netherlands, and the response was electric. Garcia surrounded himself with hand-selected European rockers — including guitarist Bruno Fevery — and used the fest to launch a well-received European run. Bringing Oliveri and Bjork on stage at that year’s Hellfest in Clisson, France, the vocalist discovered that Kyuss‘ energy had far from dissipated, and the exclamatory Kyuss Lives! was born.

On the eve of their first North American tour, Garcia reveals in the interview that follows that Kyuss Lives! has begun writing material for a new Kyuss album, and his excitement at working with Oliveri and Bjork, along with Fevery, is palpable. He also discusses going back to touring from family life, the expectation of animosity between Kyuss Lives! and Homme — not part of the reunion process — the status of his Garcia vs. Garcia solo project, that Roadburn appearance that kicked off this revival, and much more.

The complete 5,100-word Q&A is after the jump. We spoke over morning coffee on Sept. 8, 2011. Please enjoy.

John Garcia: …Having a little bit of morning coffee and trying to wake up. It was a bit of a late night last night with the band, but all is good.

You’re doing rehearsals?

It’s pretty much pre-production for the next record has already started and we’re just trying to get all of our ducks in a row and whatnot.

Wow. That seems really quick. Do you have new material already, or is pre-production writing it?

Yeah, it’s more pre-production writing it, sitting in the room and bouncing ideas back and forth, talking about tones and drum sounds, guitars, whether it be sitars or 12-string baritones or whatever it may be. We’re kind of ironing out all the logistics of it all. It’s an exciting time.

I’d imagine so, but probably quite tiring by the time you get home.

Very. I’ve got two kids. One of them’s eight and the other will be two at the end of this month. Daddy doesn’t get to sleep in, you know what I mean (laughs)? So it’s interesting. But again, it’s great to be back in that room with Brant. He’s just an amazing songwriter. Absolutely amazing. It’s just an absolute pleasure being in the guy’s presence. I’ve always had respect for that guy, and it’s great to be in there with this new group of guys that we’ve got. It’s good. It’s real good.

Is Brant taking the lead role in writing the music?

One thing for certain is it’s everybody’s responsibility to come to the table with something. This is a group thing, and Brant expects that. Brant expects that out of everybody. Whoever brings something to the table, music-wise, he needs to put his 25 percent in there, I need to put my 25 percent in there, and Bruno does, so we all have to. Nick does. So it’s definitely a planned thing, where the song deserves everybody’s input. That’s the good thing about it. It’s not just one person, it’s the whole band thing, whether it be writing lyrics – Brant’s gonna come to the table with melodies, I’m gonna come to the table with music. There’s switched roles, and I look forward to that. It’s definitely a group project, though.

Do you have any new songs ready to go? Do you have some idea as to an overall direction of the material?

You know, we have to keep the standard. Kyuss have a standard, and sometimes songs made it on vinyl and sometimes they didn’t. We want to go beyond that. We want to take Wretch, Blues, Sky, Circus, compress them, and supersede those records and pick up where we left off. Now, obviously, a huge, integral part of Kyuss is not there, and it’s going amazingly well without Josh. Now, a lot of people think that there’s – a lot of people want there to be a lot of animosity between Josh and Kyuss Lives. The flipside of the coin is that there’s no animosity. We all love and respect Josh, and it goes both ways, so it’s very, very interesting, how the process is going. We’ve only just begun, and you know, again, we want to take it to the next step. I think there’s a lot more that this band can offer than just those four records, and I think we’re equal to the task.

Any chance you’ll be introducing some new material on the North American tour?

I don’t see that happening. One of the big things that we’ve talked about was letting the cat out of the bag, and how we want to – especially in this day and age, shit gets leaked and it’s not like another Led Zeppelin record, where they’d keep it under tight wraps – but it’s something that’s special to us and it’s gotta be presented, and it’s gotta be listened to in the correct manner sonically. Shit gets leaked out, gets bootlegged, and then you start fucking with things sonically, and people’s ears are sensitive to that, so we want to keep it under wraps. So, no (laughs).

How do you mean, fucking with things sonically?

I’m not as nerdy as some engineers, and I mean that in a good way. Take for instance Scott Reeder. Sonically, if you listen to Blues versus Circus, there’s definite things that are… it seems like it’s a little more polished than some of the muddier tones in Blues. So when people start taking music and they start bootlegging it, things sonically can get very muddy, and when you’re listening to Kyuss music, you’re not supposed to listen to it in that format. Now, I’m certainly not gonna – my claim to fame is not being Mr. Ears when it comes to sonic things. You look at somebody like Eric Valentine, who’s produced Queens of the Stone Age, and talk about ears. The heat coming off the board? Fucks with his ears coming through the NS10s. If you have heat waves coming up and it’s fucking with sound waves, that’s super nerdy. That’s hardcore crazy mad scientist stuff, and in a weird sort of way, he is. My claim to fame is certainly not that. It’s more the way that the band needs to present it, and just like Sky Valley, it seemed like three different chapters. It needs to be presented in a way where people don’t mess with it, so that’s what I mean sonically, and again, by no means am I in my studio screwing around with ProTools all the time. It’s more of a writing mode. I’m that type of guy. I hope that answered the question.

You mentioned Scott Reeder. Would you work with him as a producer?

Mmm. On certain things, I definitely would, but for Kyuss, no. And I mean that with the utmost respect. Scott Reeder is amazing. I was hanging out Scott for a little bit yesterday, and he was playing me some stuff that he’s doing, and man, he’s got a good set of ears. He’s got a studio up in his 40 acres, and he’s absolutely an amazing guy. We haven’t put our finger on producers just yet, but that’s something that, again, we’re talking about. We’ve come up with a lot of names. We’re not gonna use Chris Goss, that’s for sure, and I mean that with the utmost respect to Chris. He’s a big teddy bear, we love him dearly, but again, we want to supersede where Kyuss left off. We believe there’s new horizons out there. We want to move forward, not backward, and going back, I think we’d be limiting ourselves to possible potential. We’re leaving that open and once we find the right guy, it’ll click. But we’re still in the early stages of choosing that person. It’s a long process, because if we’re gonna do it, we want to do it right. This means a lot to us. This is something that we take very seriously. We all have kids, and we all have families. We’re family guys, and when you’re trying to make a living being a musician, it’s difficult sometimes. You need to take this seriously. It’s not a side-project for any one of us. All of our projects that we have going, they were all put on the back burner and this is our number one priority. We’re really trying to do it right, and we have to. We have to keep that standard high. We don’t want to screw up what Kyuss created. It was a vibe thing, and we’re gonna supersede and continue to grow.

The Kyuss legend has grown over the years. Are you conscious of that, going into writing new material? Are you concerned at all with the expectations that would be put on something coming from you guys?

No. No, not at all. We’re not too concerned at all about it. We’re confident that we’re gonna come out and hit people emotionally. Hit people in their gut. We play the music that’s missing in our lives. We have a void in our gut, and we plan to fill that void. Speaking of the response that we’re getting now and the way you put it, the legacy, I wouldn’t go that far as using that type of verbiage, but again, we’re going out there and playing over in Europe with no new record out, solely riding on the coattails of the four pieces that we had, and the response has been overwhelming. I told Brant, I said, “Where the fuck was everybody when we were together?” I certainly understand that because we played the music that was missing in our lives, and because we played it with heart, and soul, that’s one of the reasons it’s grown. Because that type of music that we played, god damn it, it stood the test of time. Am I pleasantly pleased? Yeah. Am I pleasantly pleased to give credit where credit is due, with Brant and Josh carrying the majority of the songwriting load, including lyrically and melodically? Absolutely. Just to be a fly on the wall when those two guys got together and were a team was absolutely phenomenal. Unbelievable. To be a part of Brant’s writing crew again, I’m certainly excited about it and I’ll definitely be more proactive about it when it comes to involvement in these writing pieces. It’s going to be interesting, and again, the response has been phenomenal. Hence why we’re doing another record. Why stop there? When I first ran into Brant, boy, and he started coming up and doing a little bit of “Gardenia,” doing a little bit of “Green Machine,” it felt good to be on stage with him again. Nick came along in Clisson, France, and that really was the nucleus behind what we had going. I wrote Brant an email and called Nick and, “Do you guys want to do it again? Not just for three or four songs, but for 22 shows?” and luckily they blessed me with their presence, and we went out on the road, along with Bruno Fevery, and kicked ass. And then I met ‘em at a restaurant in Hollywood, at El Compadre, and said, “You know, I want to do another record with you guys. What do you think?” It was clear that we were all on the same level, and it’s just grown into a monster. It’s been great doing some of these pieces. I kind of went off on a tangent there, I apologize, but it’s exciting stuff.

You mentioned the beginnings in Clisson, and bringing up Brant and Nick and the start of it all. I was fortunate enough to see Garcia Plays Kyuss at Roadburn 2010 –

Brant was there. That was another thing – I’m sorry to interject – but I hadn’t seen Brant. We’d kind of stayed in touch. Over the years, we were always calm, cool and cordial with each other. Never any bad blood in between us. It was a little weird, you know. I was a little intimidated that Brant was there with his group, and I was getting up there playing “Green Machine,” which he wrote entirely. His song. It was a little weird, I was a little intimidated, but I was doing it for one reason and one reason only. I was doing it to help promote Garcia vs. Garcia, and I thought to myself, Brant was still playing music, Nick was still playing music, Josh was obviously playing music. Scott was involved in producing and playing music. And here I was, leaving my fiancé at the time at two o’clock in the morning to do an emergency C-section on a 175-pound Irish Wolfhound with 12 puppies in her. That’s what I was doing. And I missed music. Iwas doing tibial plateau leveling osteotomies with Dr. Jackman in surgery for years. I got into diagnostics, and I loved that thing, but I always missed [music]. So seeing Brant, it took a long time for me to come to terms with, do I want to get back in the music scene again? I missed it. I’d get my fixes with Danko Jones, The Crystal Method or Hermano, and take my vacations away from work to go tour, and that would satisfy my fix for a little bit, but it was never enough. So it took a long time for my wife and I – those long talks in bed at three o’clock in the morning, going, “Do you really want to back into this thing?” “Can I do it?” What better way to reintroduce myself? Don’t kick me to the curb just yet. Don’t sweep me under the carpet just yet. Here I am, and I’m celebrating my past, and I’m revisiting my past with Garcia Plays Kyuss, and all to help promote G vs. G. As long as Brant knew that and the rest of the guys knew that. I had their blessing, and it was an exciting time, and a lot of good things have come out of that. That was the very first show. Very, very, very first show that I had done with that particular group, and of course Bruno Fevery was there and he’s still with us now, because he’s an amazing guitar player. But that was a really, really awesome show… There was a lot of great bands, and a lot of bands that didn’t make it because of that god damn ash cloud in the European airspace. Remember that?

I missed Friday because of that, yeah, and was stuck there for a bit afterwards.

Dude, we got stuck too. My wife and I got stuck in Nijmagen, Holland, for days. And then going to Amsterdam, to Schipol Airport, oh my god, it was a cattle stampede. It was crazy. We finally got on a plane, and we had  just had Marshall back then, and Marshall was with my parents. Going, “Oh my god, I can’t believe…” and of course Wendy just flew over for that one show too. I felt confident that my parents could handle him – I love my parents to death – but they’ve gotta work too, and here they are, stuck with the baby because we’re stuck over in Europe, so it’s like, “Oh, what a horrible town to be stuck in, Nijmagen, Holland,” it’s absolutely gorgeous, but it wasn’t a vacation. We were biting our nails and at the edge of our seats constantly because we needed to get back to our son. It was fucking weird. Everybody was scrambling. Even my former band, Unida. Those guys play in House of Broken Promises, and they were on the tarmac at LAX. They were on the plane over to Europe, and they said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the flight’s been canceled.” I felt bad for them.

How was that experience though, that Garcia Plays Kyuss tour, different from doing Kyuss Lives?

Oh, it’s a totally different experience. When you have somebody like Brant Bjork and Nick Oliveri, the whole experience changes. I love Jacques [de Haard, bass] and Rob [Snijders, drums], but when you have the original writers playing some of their tunes, and their take on tunes that they didn’t play on – take for instance “Demon Cleaner” and doing that stuff, and seeing what Brant’s take is on Alfredo’s drumming, and fuckin’ Nick trying to master what one of the best bass players in the world tried to do. Scott Reeder. So it was very interesting. It was a whole other experience with those two guys on stage, and with all due respect – all due respect – it’s night and day, really. Totally night and day. It’s a great feeling to be back up there with those guys.

Was there a change in mindset when you brought them in? Did you know right away that this was something you wanted to move forward with in terms of new material?

Absolutely. I knew when we started rehearsing for these 22 shows. I was going back and forth from Los Angeles from our home here in the desert, and by the third day in, I got back, I sat down on the floor, and my wife was waiting for me to get up, and I said, “Wendy, I’ve been wanting to tell you this, but I’ve been suppressing it a little bit, but I want to do another record with these guys.” You know, you bounce stuff off your best friend, your wife, all the time. The next day, I went in there, and there’s Bruno and I said, “Man, what do you think?” and Bruno knew about it before Brant and Nick did, and that’s when I kept it in, let it marinate, and meditated on it for a little bit longer, and that’s when I met Brant and Nick down at El Compadre and said, “Dude, I want to do another record with you guys. This is amazing,” and luckily, they said “Fuck yeah, let’s do it.” The ball started rolling, and we knew that immediately, this is just too good to stop, and let’s continue doing this. Let’s take it real slow, kind of ease into this thing, very slow and very cautiously feel each other out, because we’re very emotional guys and we can get excited, and the last thing we wanted it to do was implode. We’re still taking it very easy. We’re just thinking about the moves. There’s been a couple – as Brant puts it – “turds in the punchbowl,” that we’ve had to get rid of, but when you start up a business like this again, you’ve got to be very cautious about it and that’s our plan; not to fuck up what Kyuss did. Again, we had a high standard, and we want to keep that high standard. We want to keep it golden, but we want to experiment a little bit more, too. We want to take this to another level, all keeping within the Kyuss guidelines. It’s very interesting, some of the stuff that we talked about the last three days. We had a three-day writing session, kind of pre-production of this, up at Brant’s studio up in Joshua Tree. We ‘re cooking steaks last night and wrapping up, and I made a pork roast the night before, so we’re eating, we’re drinking, we’ve got all of our amps up, and I’ve got my old P.A. and acoustic guitars there, and we’re just shooting the shit and bro’ing out, you know what I mean? We’re just bro’ing out, and it was great. I had a great, great time, and I’ve been out of the loop for the last three days, and Wendy, my wife, is probably glad I’m back, but yeah, it’s already become a very, very interesting ride, and I continue to look forward to these great times. We’re leaving in less than a week to start a US tour. It starts up in Toronto, and we’re excited. We haven’t toured the States, in years. I haven’t toured since a small little East Coast thing with Hermano. That was the last time I did anything in the States. So we’re really, really excited, regardless if five people show up or 500 or whatever, we’re stoked to be out on the road again. We want to work. We want to work. We want to get in the studio. We want to be on the road. We want to tour smarter and not harder, and so far, things have been moving in a very, very positive direction. Everybody seems to be moving on a united front, which is good, which is key. It’s exciting times.

I don’t want to bring up one of the turds in the punchbowl, but there was the whole thing with Nick. I’m not looking to get into details or shit-talking or whatever. It’s not really what I’m interested in, and I’m not looking to put you on any kind of spot.

People bring it up to me, and, you know, when you play in Queens of the Stone Age and you start playing in Kyuss, people gravitate to that shit. Some of the stuff, the press blows out of proportion, but the main thing that Nick needs right now is, he needs his band members to stick by him. He needs the support. He’s got a team of people that are working with him that want to see him prevail. Nick will always be Nick. I went to high school with him, and he can… he can get himself into a little bit of trouble from time to time, but again, I think that the main thing is for the band to support him, stick by his side, and not abandon him. Right now, he just needs our support, and we’ll see what happens in the future. And another thing too, man, I don’t know what it is. I think that people are so bored with their own lives, they need other people’s drama to make their lives feel more complete. That’s what a lot of people want with Josh in the band, and it’s the total fucking opposite. The total opposite. I’ve come to terms with it, that people want that shit. They want that TMZ shit, the Fox News shit, where they’re not interested in what’s going on – Kyuss is not a political band – but they’re more interested in “Bass player Nick Oliveri swat team” than other shit that’s going on in the world. If that makes it more complete for them, I guess more power to them. They want that with Josh and I too. I put Josh on a very high pedestal. I’m a fan of Josh. When you play with somebody for so many years, it’s almost impossible not to like their music. I’m a fan of Queens of the Stone Age, and I can’t talk highly enough about him. All is well.

What is the state of Garcia vs. Garcia? I know you said everything’s on hold.

It’s gonna come out. It will come out, and what better way to have it come out than post-this Kyuss thing? As of right now, that seems to be the going plan, but this train is getting bigger and heavier and meaner, and you get that train rolling, sometimes it’s hard to stop. You can maybe slow it down a little bit, but we’ll see what happens, but one thing for certain is if I don’t get that monkey off my back, it’s gonna haunt me for the rest of my life, like it has been haunting me. Those conversations. Those late-night conversations of a couple years of talking to my wife, going, “Do we really want to do this? Can we do this? Can we make it happen? Is it a lifestyle you want to go back into again?” She’s a veterinary technician. I’m a veterinary technician. I left that and went into diagnostics, which is what my true love was. That’s a whole other fuckin’ different – it’s not a nine to five – it’s a 6AM to 7PM type of life. When you leave that lifestyle, all the camaraderie that we have in our vet clinics that we did, it’s a big fucking move. It’s a huge, huge lifestyle change. To not prevail, to not have Garcia vs. Garcia prevail in some way, shape or form post-this Kyuss train that I’m talking about, it’d be a damn shame. I don’t want to abandon that idea. It’s in my heart, it’s in my blood. I’ve been wanting to do a solo record ever since I was 18 years old living in North Palm Springs with Nick. I’ve always wanted to do it and now was the time, and it just so happened – talk about a slap in the face – what just happened? Now our plans completely and totally changed, and we had to think about this long and hard, and we did. We did, and it’s rad. It’s really cool so far.

You kind of alluded to it, but the lifestyle change. Family is obviously important. Has it been hard for you to transition back into touring life?

Absolutely. You need the support of your wife, and that’s key, and you need the support of your kids, and it’s gotta make sense. It has to make sense in every shape and form. Do we knock ‘em back a little bit and do we have a couple pops – as Brant puts it – before we go on stage? Absolutely. I gotta watch myself. I gotta be careful too. I don’t want to fall back into that, “I don’t give a fuck – woo hoo!” like I was back in the day. Not to be talking about myself in the third person, but there’s two Garcias these days. There’s the old guy, who I want to beat the shit out of, slap him around and say, “Wise up,” and then there’s me now. I just turned 41 about five days ago, and… 41, trying to make a little bit of a comeback, you’re fuckin’ risking it, John. You’re pushing it. Don’t praise the bread before it’s baked, type of thing. You gotta ease into it and be careful and it has to make sense in all aspects: financially, time-wise. But I’ll tell you what, it’s great being able to wake up and spend more time with my family, that I’m here, and I’ll look at Wendy and go, “Do you want to go back to the vet clinic?” and she looks to me, because she’s full-time mom now, and she goes, “No, I kind of like this.” The only time it’s hard is being on the road, but that’s why Skype’s there. That’s what Facetime is there for. That’s what phones are there for. We Skype all the time. We have to. It’s a lifestyle change, and family. Again, we’re all family men. That’s good. Brant has a beautiful son. Bruno has two wonderful girls. I’ve got a boy and a girl. Nicky’s free and clear, but three quarters of the band, we’re family guys, so we know that’s important. It’s gotta make sense. And so far, so good.

Talking about Bruno for a second. Something I kind of meant to bring up before, but was there something about his playing specifically that made him the guy? I know you did vocals for his band Arsenal, but was there something special about his playing that made him the guy for the job?

His mad skills are without a doubt. That was unquestionable: his playing. I’m sure there’s a lot of other players that have mad skills, but that was never a question. I knew about his talents long before I even was thinking about this. But what made him special is his character. His personality. His demeanor. His disposition. His overall vibe. He’s a very, very down to earth, organic person, and that is the key to somebody that’s filling in some very big fuckin’ shoes. Let’s be honest. You’re stepping in for Homme. And Bruno plays Josh Homme’s and Brant’s songs with an incredible amount of respect. You never want to butcher anybody’s songs, and he hasn’t. So that was the main thing. Now, when trying out guitar players, my manager at the time would try these guys and try these guys and say, “Nay, nay, nay, nay,” and I wasn’t even there in the room. I wasn’t gonna waste my fucking time. Wasn’t gonna do it. I let my management exhaust his resources and I went, “Alright, I know a guy, and if there’s one guy that can pull this off, it’s gonna be this guy.” He was my first and only choice. And that might sound weird and a little arrogant, but when it comes to vibe and what I was going for, there was no question in my mind. And obviously, to the readers of this piece, if you don’t know who Bruno Fevery is now, I promise you, you’ll know who Bruno Fevery is post-this Kyuss record, or post-the show. Come to Philadelphia. Come to the House of Blues in New Orleans. Come to House of Blues in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay. Go to Boston. Go to New York City. Come to Pomona. Go to Denver. Houston, or Austin, or Santa Fe. Or Tempe. Come to one of these shows, and one thing’s for certain: You’ll know who Bruno Fevery is after he gets done doing what he does. He’s an amazing guy, and he’s so mellow. He is very mellow and very laid back. He reminds me – and I don’t know Jimmy Page – but his style? He reminds me of a young Jimmy Page. He kind of looks like a young Jimmy Page, and that’s a bold statement. He’s got a style, and it just so happens. I mean, who doesn’t love Jimmy Page? He’s a big fan of his. He’s a big fan of Hendrix. It’s gonna be killer working with him. It was great working this past couple days. He’s going back home to visit his two girls. He’ll be missed. Next time we see him, it’ll be in Toronto.

So the plan is to tour basically into December. Will you write on the road, or save that for when you’re off tour?

We’ll probably do some writing on the road. We’ll probably do some closed soundchecks and that type of stuff, and on the bus. But the down-time. In between the two US legs, we’ve got a month, and that’s gonna be the next session, coming in. We’re all on the same page, and we’ve got our schedules going. Brant likes to move pretty quick, and so far, so good on that. Without rushing it and forcing it – you can’t force this stuff – but when he sits down and he goes, it’s not, “Woo-hoo! Let’s play some cards and you get in there,” we’re jamming out. We were jamming out these last three days, and it’s been rad.

You’ll tour more in 2012 behind a new record.

Yeah. We’re going to continue working, but our main plight is getting this record done. We’d like to have it out before summer, but I don’t think that’s gonna happen, because there’s gotta be planning and everybody’s gotta be on the same page, and the way things work right now, if you drop a record and you don’t do it right, you’re fucked. So we want to make sure we take the time. As of right now, it’s looking like the end of summer, possibly fall, but we’ll see how things go. We don’t want to force it too, and if it takes a little bit longer, it takes a little bit longer. I don’t foresee that happening, but that’s the immediate plan, anyway.

Kyuss Lives! website

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Now obviously, to tell the whole story would require a 17-hour Ken Burns special and then some — as Ozzy has simply led that much life — but though God Bless Ozzy Osbourne started out promising by charting his childhood and Black Sabbath‘s formation and first several records, the movie soon took a turn and abandoned that method of storytelling, jumping directly from a scene of current Ozzy watching and being disgusted by the video for “The Ultimate Sin” to the first season of the MTV reality show The Osbournes, which came some 16 years later, and shifting the focus from his sundry triumphs and inebriated antics to his getting clean and, as Sharon Osbourne put it in one of her many dime-store-therapist-lingo interview segments, “growing up.”

That’s fine. I went into God Bless Ozzy Osbourne thinking it was probably going to be a one-sided take on the man’s life, perhaps some effort to restore the dignity that the last decade has stripped him of (The Osbournes playing no small part in that, but by no means being the only misstep), and that’s precisely what it was. The fact is that he’s an entertaining interview — I’ve never been so fortunate myself — and that alone is worth watching. Tony Iommi appeared three or four times, and since the movie-current live footage sprinkled throughout had Zakk Wylde on guitar, I’m guessing it was from 2008-2009, right around the time Iommi and Osbourne were embroiled in that lawsuit over the rights to the name Black Sabbath. I guess they were lucky to get him at all, if that’s the case.

But even so, the “most honest portrait” it wasn’t. Scenes of Ozzy‘s kids from his first and second marriage saying he was a shitty father popped up and were gone with little examination or criticism, flashing back and forth to a current interview thread of Ozzy talking about it, and he still couldn’t remember what year his first daughter was born. In addition, in talking about his relationship with Sharon, they laid out the timing that it began roughly two years before he divorced his first wife, but never mentioned it as an affair, the two of them laughing instead that they were either in bed, on the bus, or on stage at that point in their lives. Har har. And when talking about their marriage, Ozzy says he wanted to start a family and that’s why he married Sharon, completely neglecting to mention his two prior children, who just a few minutes ago, were remembered as begging him not to leave them.

So really, it’s got its issues. Leaving the theater, I couldn’t help but wonder about the footage they left out. They didn’t even interview Zakk Wylde! Robert Trujillo, who played bass with Ozzy‘s band for a while, is never mentioned as having done so, instead showing up as a representative of Metallica — which is laughable — and since you apparently can’t say anything about Black Sabbath these days without Henry Rollins showing up, he was there. Tommy Lee told a few choice stories of touring with Ozzy in 1985, and Rudy Sarzo gave a heartfelt reminisce of the day Randy Rhoads died, but there was a lot they left out, both positive and negative. Here are the five things that most stuck out to me:

1. Master of Reality
After recounting the first two Sabbath albums, they mentioned 1971′s Master of Reality, showed the cover, and then brushed it aside to talk about Vol. 4. Not for nothing, but Master of Reality has been scientifically proven to be the greatest album of all time. They’ve done tests. In labs. Nothing is better. I suppose I shouldn’t complain, because Technical Ecstasy didn’t get mentioned at all. Seriously. Like it didn’t exist. No love for “Rock & Roll Doctor.”

2. Ozzfest
This was a real surprise, especially with the time spent giving the highlights of Ozzy‘s career. The festival of which he was the namesake? Nothing about it ever appeared in the movie.

3. Jake E. Lee
Nope. The guy basically saved Ozzy‘s post-Randy Rhoads career. And nothing.

4. The second, third and fourth seasons of The Osbournes
You’d imagine in watching God Bless Ozzy Osbourne that someone tricked the family into filming their lives for MTV. I think it’s Kelly at one point (might be Jack) who says something about people thinking it was funny, but it was really watching their family fall apart because of her father’s drinking and drug use. Meanwhile, they raked in shitloads of cash on that and kept it going for three years! If it’s that awful, even if you’re contractually obligated, pull out and take the lawsuit. Aimee Osbourne continues to look like a young woman who has her shit together.

5. Any music after 1986.
No No More Tears, no Ozzmosis. In the live footage, Ozzy sings some of “No More Tears,” but no studio album after Bark at the Moon is discussed in detail, and neither is the reunion with Black Sabbath in 1997, the retirement tour, or even the names of the people in the current (as of the movie) band. Mike Bordin is shown playing drums a few times, and Wylde makes regular appearances on stage, but it looks like the camera is actively trying to avoid Rob “Blasko” Nicholson.

I’m glad Ozzy Osbourne is sober. In God Bless Ozzy Osbourne, toward the end of the film, he is shown driving, talking about getting his driver’s license and wanting to have his shit together, feeling like he loves himself for the first time in his life. He speaks clearly and stands up straight and looks nothing like the bumbling man in the garden yelling, “Sharon!” This is all wonderful. I mean it. I also think that part of having that ability to truly be comfortable with who you are means accepting your failures as well as your successes. You could easily say he didn’t make the film, and he didn’t — Sharon is listed as executive producer and Jack is given the aforementioned producer credit — but there’s no question it’s a favorable take rather than a genuine examination of his career and life.

It’s one side of a story to which there are probably 50 other sides, and I’m sure you could make a 90-minute documentary about the first Sabbath album and it would seem too short, but if the project is too much to chew, then what’s accomplished by putting it out there anyway is a few entertaining stories, choice interviews, some live footage (the 1974 California Jam is always welcome), and nothing approaching the raw analysis promised. So it was.

Last night after work, The Patient Mrs. and I hit the road north and west and got up to Buffalo, New York, where we stayed the night. This afternoon, after an unsuccessful attempt to hit a record store there called Spiral Scratch — whose noon opening time was, to be fair, qualified with an “ish” on their website — we made our way into Canada to cut west to our final destination, Detroit, which is where I’m posting from now.

Hell of a ride. I don’t think Canada was any more or less boring than western Pennsylvania or Ohio might have been, but it’s another stamp on my passport, anyway. Every time someone asked where we were headed and we told them, the response was, “Why would you go to Detroit? Nobody goes there.”

Fair enough question, but I like a lot of shit people don’t like, and yeah we saw some bombed-out looking shit on the way here, but whatever. No more than Newark or Paterson back in Jersey. Anyway, it’s a road trip, and I’ll be here through the weekend, so I don’t know how many posts I’m going to get up, so if you’re wondering why there isn’t the usual obsessive amount of output today and tomorrow, that’s why.

I should have known though that the second I wasn’t in front of a computer the site would crash. Big thrill sending “my shit is broken” emails to the hosting company from my phone, believe you me. Really nails down that whole “getting away from it all” thing. At least it’s back up now, though it always seems as soon as I say that, it implodes again. Ugh.

Anyway, hope you enjoy the Blue Cheer video above, taped at the soundcheck of a show I later attended at the old Knitting Factory in Manhattan. That was a good night. In case I don’t get to post again before the weekend, thanks everyone for checking in this week, and next week I’ll have an interview with artist Sean “Skillit” McEleny and a Six Dumb Questions with the recently-reviewed Threefold Law, as well as reviews of The Re-Stoned and hopefully the Clutch show that I’m going to in Flint on Saturday. Good stuff to come, and in the meantime, if you haven’t checked out the forum, it’s like YOB-city in there. Lots of fun.