Zakk Wylde has been making heavy music for close to four decades. He has made records about power, darkness, and the particular brand of American metal that puts the riff first and everything else second. He has done it through lineup changes, through health crises, through the loss of the band that defined his identity as a guitarist. Engines of Demolition, Black Label Society's first album since 2021's Doom Crew Inc., is something different. This one comes out of grief.
The Album
Wylde began writing Engines of Demolition in mid-2022, building the material between legs of his Pantera touring commitments. The work stretched across four years, tracked entirely at the Black Vatican — his home studio in Los Angeles, where every Black Label Society album since Order of the Black (2010) has been built. His stated goal: take the time to do it right, support the album properly, not rush it out on a cycle's momentum.
The result is 15 tracks — the most substantial BLS record in years. The formula has never been mysterious. Wylde writes riffs that sound like they've been aging in a barrel, plays guitar at a technical standard that most modern players don't approach, and structures everything around a groove heavy enough to hold a room. Doom Crew Inc. proved BLS at full output still sounds like no one else. Engines of Demolition arrives with more weight behind it.
Zakk and Ozzy — 38 Years
To understand why "Ozzy's Song" lands the way it does, you have to start in 1987.
Zakk Wylde was 20 years old when he sent a demo tape to Ozzy Osbourne. He had been playing guitar since he was eight, had spent his teenage years developing the fast, pinch-harmonic-saturated style that would become one of the most imitated tones in metal history. The tape landed. He got the audition. He got the job.
What followed redefined both careers. Wylde played on No More Tears (1991) — widely considered Ozzy's best solo album, the record that contains "Mama, I'm Coming Home" and "Hellraiser." He played on Ozzmosis (1995), Black Rain (2007), and was part of the lineup for Patient Number 9 (2022), Ozzy's final studio record. In the years between those albums, Wylde built Black Label Society into one of heavy metal's most consistently productive acts. But Ozzy was always the axis.
The relationship between them was not simply professional. Wylde has spoken about Osbourne the way you talk about someone who changed the direction of your life — because Ozzy did. A 20-year-old from New Jersey with a demo tape became one of the defining guitarists of the post-Randy Rhoads Ozzy era, and then became his own thing entirely, with his own band and his own audience. But the throughline back to that 1987 audition never broke.
When Ozzy Osbourne died on July 22, 2025, Wylde was on tour with Pantera. He received the news from Jack Osbourne while on the road. He had already written the music for what would become "Ozzy's Song." He had not yet written the words.
Ozzy's Song
The story of how Wylde wrote "Ozzy's Song" is specific. That specificity is what gives it weight.
He returned home after the tour. He sat in his library — surrounded by Ozzy's books, which lined the shelves around him. He was looking at a photograph of his mentor while listening to music he had already finished. And he wrote the lyrics.
"I was looking at him while I was listening to the tunes, and then I just wrote the lyrics," Wylde has said.
The last communication Ozzy sent Wylde came just over two weeks before he died — a text message following the Back to the Beginning farewell concert on July 5, 2025. That show brought the surviving members of Black Sabbath to Villa Park in Birmingham for a final performance. The city gave Ozzy the farewell he deserved. He was gone seventeen days later.
"Ozzy's Song" closes Engines of Demolition — last track, last slot, where it belongs. It is not a radio piece. It is not a tribute structured for accessibility or ceremony. Wylde did not write it as a formal obituary. He wrote it in a quiet room, surrounded by a dead man's books, listening to music that man never heard. The song came from that room.
On the Road
Black Label Society launched their North American tour on February 27 in San Antonio, running through April 10 in Charlotte. A short run of Southeastern dates follows in May, and the band then transitions to UK and European touring from May 28 through August 14.
The timing lines up cleanly with the release — Engines of Demolition drops March 27, mid-run, which means the band will be deep into the material by the final North American dates. For anyone who has not caught BLS live in a while, this is the tour cycle to correct that.
Find Black Label Society Tour Tickets on Ticketmaster
Pre-Order
Engines of Demolition arrives March 27. Pre-orders and physical formats are available now via Amazon.
Pre-Order Engines of Demolition on Amazon
The Weight of This Record
Metal has always processed grief through volume. That is part of what the genre is for — a place to take the things that don't fit anywhere else and run them through a Marshall stack until they make sense. Wylde has been doing that since he was a teenager in New Jersey.
Engines of Demolition is the first major heavy metal record to speak directly to Ozzy Osbourne's passing from someone who was present for the best years of his solo career. Sharon was with him at the end. Jack called Wylde with the news. But Wylde made a record — and put the tribute last, in the place you save for what matters most.
This is not a nostalgia product. Fifteen tracks of Black Label Society at full output is fifteen tracks of Zakk Wylde doing what he has been doing since 1987: making heavy music that sounds like it came out of a life actually lived in it. "Ozzy's Song" just makes the stakes of that life legible.
That is why this record will be remembered after the release cycle ends.
Full 2026 tour dates in the Metal Tours Hub. More on Ozzy Osbourne's legacy in our Metal News archive.
