7 Heavy Metal Songs About Vicious Personal Feuds
2. GZR - Giving Up The Ghost
With a pedigree of prophetic lyrics touching on social, religious and ecological concerns, among other things, one might not expect Geezer Butler to pen a song of a personally spiteful nature.
However, after departing from Black Sabbath in 1994 following his second stint in the band, Butler formed G//Z/R with Burton C. Bell (Fear Factory) and Deen Castronovo (Journey) and released Plastic Planet.
On the song “Giving Up the Ghost,” Butler challenges former band mate Tony Iommi’s effect on the band’s legacy, accusing him of having “bastardised my intellect” and “plagiarised and parodied the magic of our meaning,” with less-than-subtle criticism of the ham-fisted references to Satan on later Sabbath albums. Butler continues his tirade with statements of “the spirit is dead and gone” and “it’s time to put the thing to rest.”
Butler may have been onto something there, considering that same year saw the release of Forbidden, indisputably the worst album in Black Sabbath’s catalog. Still, that did not stop him from burying the hatchet three years later to take part in the reunion of the original Black Sabbath line-up in 1998, as well as every Sabbath-related endeavor thereafter, including the reunion of The Mob Rules line-up under the moniker Heaven and Hell.