Over 25 years after contributing Vol. 4 track to The Osbournes soundtrack, SOAD revisit Black Sabbath classic at MetLife Stadium
System of a Down paid tribute to Ozzy Osbourne during the band’s concert on Wednesday in East Rutherford, New Jersey, with a rendition of Black Sabbath’s “Snowblind.”
The MetLife Stadium gig, the band’s first New York City-area concert in over a decade, also marked System of a Down’s first concert since Osbourne’s July 22 death. After leading the crowd through a chant of “Ozzy! Ozzy!,” guitarist Daron Malakian summoned the spirit of Osbourne by quoting that singer’s trademark introduction: “We’re gonna do a number now about cocaine, it’s called ‘Snowblind.’”
System of a Down first covered “Snowblind” over 25 years ago as part of the soundtrack for Ozzy’s MTV reality show The Osbournes. While the Vol. 4 track was in heavy rotation in System of a Down’s live repertoire at the turn of the millennium, the band hadn’t played “Snowblind” in concert since an August 2002 show at that year’s OzzFest, appropriately.
Following Osbourne’s death, the members of System of a Down each paid tribute to the heavy metal legend on social media, where they also shared behind-the-scenes footage from the OzzFests.
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“If you can see my face and my eyes in this pic you can see that I felt like I was in a dream. That’s because as a kid Ozzy was such a big deal for me he actually appeared in my dreams,” Malakian wrote. “I was only 22 or 23 yrs old when this pic was taken, so I was still a kid. But I was living my dream standing next to the guy I idolized my whole life. RIP Ozzy. You meant everything to me.
Singer Serj Tankian added, “Ozzy was our musical Godfather, inducting us into the world of Ozzfest as a young band. He was always funny with a disdain for hypocrisy, a quality I will forever admire and cherish.”
