Zakk Wylde On Black Label Society’s New Album ‘Engines Of Demolition’
‘I still thank God every day for Black Sabbath, especially on Easter without a doubt!’
He raises his Black Label Society coffee cup in salute. Acknowledgment of how blessed his life has been and Faith. For the next fifteen minutes or so, Zakk Wylde, the larger than life metal character who shot to fame as Ozzy Osbourne’s axeman, forged a successful career on his own, moonlights with Pantera and even flirted with Guns N Roses, will take us through all the above and much more in promotion of the man’s band new album, Engines Of Demolition.
It’s Easter Sunday in the States, it’s just after 5am here in Australia. Coffee is on the agenda for both of us. Zakk is a larger-than-life personality however he really is just a big music nerd who is living all of our dreams. The new album, the band’s twelfth and first in five years, is packed full of chunky meaty slabs of riffs, grooves, head banging beats and at times, poignancy. A lot has happened in the last five years, so grab yourself a coffee and buckle up.
‘That whole time we did the Pantera celebration, so there’s no sense of putting an album out if you can’t give it any TLC, you know what I mean? So, to me, it didn’t bother me at all. It was just like, well, we’re doing the Pantera celebration now. After it does its run of us celebrating Dime, Vinny, Philip and Rex, then we’ll put the record out. For me, it’s all perspective. I was just looking at it like I’ll just keep writing songs until we’re good to go. Then the guys would keep coming out to the Vatican. We would track some more stuff. Then we’d go back out with the Pantera celebration. Then when I got back home after another year, it’d be like, all right, let’s just track some more. I got some other song ideas.’
‘Obviously something like ‘Ozzy’s Song’, I’m not going to write the lyrics to that if Oz hadn’t passed away. So, within those four years, obviously the first group of songs, ‘Name In Blood’ was in there probably in 2023, the main riff and the song, it was kind of already there, but that morphed over the three and a half years until it is what it is now.’
‘Like I always say, nothing’s a waste from the first Black Label album to where we’re at now. It’s just like with Zeppelin, why didn’t they write Zeppelin ‘Four’ first with ‘Stairway to Heaven’, ‘Black Dog’ and ‘Going To California’? They weren’t there yet. So that’s like saying ‘One’, ‘Two’, and ‘Three’ for Zeppelin was a waste of time until they got to ‘Four’. No, but they had to do those three records to get them to ‘Four’. You know what I mean? So, it’s just like with Rush, ‘A Farewell To Kings’, ‘The Spirit Of Radio’, and then got them to ‘Tom Sawyer’ and ‘Limelight’ and everything. They had to do those records to get to ‘Moving Pictures’ You’re not there yet. You know what I mean? For all of us, I mean, no matter who you are, you have to go from point A to get to point B, C, D, E, and F. If F is the destination, we got to go through all those other stages to get there. So, nothing’s ever a waste.’
Name In Blood, Gatherers Of Souls and Pedal To The Floor are all bona fide metal monsters of tracks, Wylde’s signature heavy guitar sound, and vocal melodies permanent throughout the album that is straight up hard rock. No gimmicks or trends here. Just good old fashioned American muscle car metal that will sounds just as good in thirty years’ time.
‘I agree. When you listen to AC/DC, whether it’s ‘Girls Got Rhythm’, ‘Highway To Hell’, ‘Hell’s Bells’, ‘Back In Black’, if they wrote those songs today, they would still be great songs. That’s the whole thing. It’s so funny, just the other day when we played in New Jersey, I had a whole bunch of my buddies that were at the gig and all of them, we were playing these songs at keg parties in our friends’ homes, like in the kitchens, basements, in the backyards when we were all seventeen years old. Now we’re all fifty nine years old and I’m still playing ‘Children Of The Grave’, ‘Fairies Wear Boots’, ‘War Pigs’, ‘Snowblind’, and I’m like, “Oh, this is insane.” I’m having flashbacks to when we were playing these keg parties in our friend’s houses in high school back in 1984. Once again, I was like, “Thank you, God.”
The album closes with a mourning Wylde singing to his recently passed away friend in Ozzy’s Song. An emotional and fitting epitaph to their bond.
‘I had the music already written, from 2023 on, it was just stockpiling song ideas. So, I was real happy with the way the music came out. So, I was like, I’ll get around to that one eventually when I figure out what I … Usually lyrics are always last anyways. But after we laid Ozzy to rest and when the Pantera celebration wound down, I got home and I was sitting in our little library we have in our house. It must’ve been like one o’clock in the morning. I put the headphones on. I was looking at a book of Ozzy and I just wrote those lyrics. So just thinking of him. So that’s where the lyrics came from.’
Zakk’s journey is wild and wonderful, and we take this time to discuss Pantera, Guns N Roses and his first venture outside Ozzy, Pride & Glory. After being plucked from relative obscurity in New Jersey to swing the axe with Ozzy, his boss’s then ‘retirement’ encouraged Zakk to strike out on his own.
‘Me, James and Brian had a blast when we made that album. It was a lot of fun. It was almost kind of like not being in your mom and dad’s house and having your own little apartment. Even though as small as it is, it’s me, you and Andy and we’re all hanging out and it’s like, man, this is so cool. We’re not at home anymore. You know what I mean? Being with Ozzy, it was that always having that security blanket of your parents and your home. But now we’re on our own. It was that kind of excitement when we made that record. We had an amazing time making everything and I’m still buddies with James and Brian, so you never know.’
The boss decides retirement sucks and comes back with Ozzmosis, however at this time one of the more peculiar stories starts doing the rounds in that Zakk was in Guns N Roses. I had to ask.
‘Well, no. I knew Slash, Duff and Steven, when they were exploding, back when I first started with Ozzy. I’d never met Axl before, or Izzy. But I remember I spoke with Axl on the phone. He was like, Zakk, we were talking about guitar players and Slash mentioned “Well, what about Zakk? Why don’t we ask Zakk if he wants to jam?” I guess Gilby wasn’t playing with them at that point. I’m buddies with Gilby now. My wife does her podcast with Gilby’s wife, Daniella. Obviously, it’s like me joining The Stones, I would be Ronnie Wood. I mean, because Slash is the Keith Richards of that band, and it’s Mick and Keith. I knew the dynamic of the band. Me going in, it is what it is, so just don’t get in the way. But I was like, “Yeah, sure.”
‘I remember we were working on ‘Ozzmosis’ at the time. We had a great time working on that record with Michael Beinhorn, Geezer and Dean Castronova and the boss. Axl was like, “Zakk, maybe we can get together in between when you’re working with Oz and then we’ll get together. So, we were getting together jamming, then we were doing some stuff over at Duff’s house and demoing ideas and everything was great. I mean, we were just all jamming, having a good time, but it was just up in the air and nothing was happening.’
‘Then Oz was like, “Zakk, are you going to be jamming with the fellas or are we going to get together and do this tour?” I said, “Oz, let me find out what’s going on with the guys.” Everything was up in the air. Oz was asking me and he goes, “Look, I’m going to have to get somebody because I can’t have you in the middle of a tour leaving.” That’s when Joe Holmes came in and I’m buddies with Joe and Joe’s amazing. So, Joe was out with the boss and then nothing was happening with Guns and I was in limbo for a little while there. ‘Rose Petalled Garden’ was one of the demos, one of the song ideas that we had. I had some of these other riffs laying around. I was like, “I guess I’m just going to have to do it myself.” I wasn’t playing with Oz, I wasn’t playing with Guns. So Black Label Society was born, and here we are thirty years later coming up.’
As for his stint in another iconic band, Pantera, where are we at with that?
‘I think they could do it as long as Phillip and Rex want to do it. Me and Charlie will always be there to celebrate Dime, Vinny, Philip and Rex with this awesome thing that they created. It really is a community. When we were doing the shows, you have the whole Pantera faithful that saw Pantera back when they were playing in front of eight people at a bar and grill. Then you have all the younger kids coming up going, “I only heard about the legend of Pantera through my dad and my uncle that told us how great Pantera is and everything like that.”
The man’s faith is important to him. Yes, he may have had hellraising drinking days, counted the Prince Of Darkness as one of his closest friends yet his faith, on this weekend no less, is the basis of all he has achieved.
‘Without a doubt. I thank God every day. I thank Christ when I wake up, I thank him for brunch, lunch, Lynyrd, dinner, midnight snack and before my head hits the pillow every day. I always have. Even before I started with the boss, I always thanked God for everything I have. It really is the truth, man. Every day is a blessing and a gift and you just got to just conquer. I tell my kids, just like be like your dad. Do what you love. I don’t tell my kids, you have to be like me, you have to be a musician or whatever. No, whatever you have passion for, whatever it is that you love and brings you joy, that’s what you should be doing in life, man.’
‘It really is the truth, man. Just be grateful and thankful. I always have been. Whatever rain falls on you, it happens to all of us. Life is based on strength and resilience, man. You get knocked down, you get back up. It’s just like my father being a D-Day Omaha Beach World War II vet and Ozzy, people are always like, “Zach, what did you learn from your father and Ozzy?” I go, “Nothing I didn’t already know. ” You live with the heart of a lion, man. You get knocked down, you get up and you plough through walls and that’s it because no one wants to hear about your excuses. No one wants to hear about you whining or complaining. Complaining doesn’t fix anything anyways. Getting off the couch and doing something about it and hiking up your skirt and rolling up your sleeves, that fixes problems.’
‘You can either be happy or miserable. I always tell everybody, you want to honour Dime or Vinny, then live like Dime and Vinny. They lived like Berserkers every day. Every day, man. It’s like we could be miserable or we could be calling the guys firing up the barbecue right now and enjoying life. So, they would fire up the barbecue and enjoy life. That’s the way you should live your life, like a Berserker to the fullest. Every day is a gift, man!’
Interview By Iain McCallum
Engines Of Demolition is out now, buy HERE…
