Black Sabbath legend uses AI vocalist to craft new solo material

During a question-and-answer session at the 2025 Steel City Con, held from December 5-7 in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, the renowned Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler was queried regarding the possibility of future solo albums, as per Blabbermouth. As a founding member of Black Sabbath, Butler played a pivotal role in the band’s formation. He is also credited with composing the lyrics for renowned tracks such as “War Pigs,” “Iron Man,” and “Paranoid.”

Oh, gosh. I’ve got tons of stuff. Since we finished the last Sabbath show, I’ve just been going through all the stuff that I’ve written since the ’80s onwards and updating everything. And what held me back before, I didn’t have a singer when I’m at home, but A.I. [artificial intelligence] came along. [Laughs] So all my songs now, I’ve updated them all and I’m using an A.I. singer to bring all the lyrics out. So now I can take it to singers that I’m gonna be working with and go, ‘This is what I want on the album,’ so they’ve got a better idea. Before I was just, like, playing them a bass riff or something, going, ‘Can you sing to this?’ And they’d be going, ‘Yeah.’ [Laughs] But it’s so much better now, ’cause you can sit in your studio and do everything on A.I. and then take it to proper musicians and let them take over. It’s really helped me. A lot of people think it’s cheating.

He was also asked to describe his approach to songwriting. Geezer provided a response to this question, elaborating on his creative process.

With Sabbath — Sabbath, we’d sit down in a room together and just jam and jam and jam until somebody came up with something that we could work with. Once we had a good riff to write to, we’d finish the music part of it. Ozzy would sing his vocal line, then I’d write the lyrics. So it mainly came from jamming.

Geezer Butler was inquired about the potential for future collaboration on new musical projects with either of the remaining original members of Black Sabbath.

Specifically, he was asked about working with guitarist Tony Iommi and drummer Bill Ward.

I was actually gonna do some… Tony’s got this great album that he is doing right at the moment. He’s just in the process — I think he’s in the process of mixing it right now, so it should be out sometime [in 2026]. He’s got this great singer from Sweden on it. And he wanted me to do three bass tracks, but he wanted me to do them in England, and I can’t go to England until June [of 2026]. So if he can hang on that long, I might collaborate with him back in June, if he can wait that long.