Geezer Butler is a fan of 90’s metal: “It was amazing to see what new bands were coming out then”

Following the riotous successes of the 1980s, the rise of grunge and changed preferences in popular music gave the impression that metal was in decline and returning to the underground. While some of us may feel this way, one guy who has been there since the beginning actually enjoyed that era of metal as a genre. In an interview with Knotfest, Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler reflected on the 1990s and the bands that arose during that period.

I was really into metal back then, and it was influencing the stuff I was writing as well…It was amazing to see what new bands were coming out then. And each one had a different version of metal if you want to call it metal. Different versions, instead of just going on and screaming into the microphone and everything sounding the same. Really good, different bands coming out. Slipknot being one of them, obviously. It was great. I really liked Fear Factory at the time and I’d been writing all this stuff that was too heavy for Sabbath or Ozzy. Pedro Howse, my nephew, had this band called Crazy Angel, which was like an ultra-thrash band. So, when me and him got writing together it came out ultra-heavy, and I wasn’t restricted to what lyrics I was going to write about.

Butler was quite focused on his solo career at that moment. He eventually released his debut solo album, “Plastic Planet”, before Ozzfest 1999. If you play that song today, you’ll notice that it’s full of sounds that were popular at the time. Burton C. Bell, an ex-Fear Factory vocalist, supplied guest vocals on the album.