10 Rock & Metal Bands Who Fired Their Singer

Black Sabbath are widely recognised as the founders of heavy metal as we know it, twisting rock and blues into a new form with occult lyrics, down-tuned guitars and onstage and backstage antics that created the template for the devil-may-care bad behaviour of every generation of metal musician after them.

And the figurehead of it all was the band's singer Ozzy Osbourne. Born in Birmingham, but raised in the shadow of chaos, Ozzy summoned demons, took all the drugs and got in trouble with just about every institution going. And still he found the time to put his iconic stamp on eight Sabbath albums during his initial tenure.

But the singer's antics and addictions gradually eclipsed his musical output with the band, and in 1979 when they could suffer the drink and drug-fuelled mania no more, his bandmates finally sacked him. Unfortunately, none of the eight frontmen who came after him really stuck, with only Ronnie James Dio producing a sound that was distinctively and irrevocably Sabbath. Fortunately for them, for us, for everyone, they took the Prince of Darkness back for a run lasting from the late '90s to the mid-'00s, and again for their final reunion, which included the farewell album 13 (2013).

Sabbath, bloody Sabbath, eh?