Black Sabbath are continuing to write new material despite Tony Iommi being diagnosed with cancer.
Some of the founding fathers of heavy metal, Black Sabbath announced their reformation earlier this year. Set to headline Download, the band have also revealed that they plan to record new material.
Rick Rubin is in line to record, although no set schedule has been announced. Guitarist Tony Iommi was recently diagnosed with lymphoma, a condition that fans feared would de-rail the re-union.
Now Geezer Butler has revealed that the guitarist’s health battle has – if anything – energised the band. Writing on his official website Butler said: “Today [Jan19th] we got the engines back up and running @ Tony’s home studio. Far from being down and depressed about his lymphoma diagnosis, Tony had already written the music for two new songs, and I must say it has given us all a kick up the rump- it’s great to hear him churning out those riffs again, assuaging the Demon C. Takes more than that to stop Tony. Can’t wait for you all to hear our workings, it has been great working on this stuff.”
Continuing, the bass player wrote: “I want to thank the lovely encouraging emails sent to this site giving Tony love and encouragement and great vibes. It really does help, not only Tony, but us as a band- it raises up our spirits and restores our faith in this tarnished world. Sabb fans are good people, time and again you have proven your faith in us and boosted our endeavour.”
A recent posting on Tony Iommi’s website saw the guitarist thank fans for their support. “I just want to say how overwhelmed I am with all your messages of support, thank you so much” he wrote. “Well it’s not what I wanted for Christmas, that’s for sure, but now I can’t wait for the test results to come in and get going with the treatment.”
“It’s really good that the guys are coming over so that we can continue working on the album as things are going great in the studio.”
