13 Tracklist
13 is the nineteenth and final studio album by Black Sabbath. The album was first released in Europe on the 10th of June 2013. It was then released worldwide on the 11th of June 2013.
In an interview with Geezer Butler, the name “13” was come up with by Ozzy Osbourne, and at the time it was thought of, it isn’t any deeper than the fact that the album came out in 2013 and had 13 songs recorded for the album. They ended up recording more than that later and releasing some tracks on the EP The End.
It is the only studio album since 1995’s Forbidden. It was also the first studio recording with Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler since their live album 1998’s Reunion.
They originally began work on the album in 2001 with Rick Rubin but the album was put on hold as Ozzy resumed his solo career. After the band announced the end of their hiatus on 11 November 2011 they began working on the new album. The drumming was done by Brad Wilk as there was a “contractual dispute” with original drummer Bill Ward.
The artwork was created by Nick Dart and Neil Bowen in London. It features a two and a half meter number 13 made from wicker being burnt in the Buckinghamshire countryside. There is also a behind the scenes video here.
“13” Q&A
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What have the artists said about the album?
In 2022, Ozzy was asked if he looks back positively on the album and said:
Not really, because, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t really get a charge from the album. Although Rick Rubin is a good friend of mine, I wasn’t really- I was just singing. It was like stepping back in time, but it wasn’t a glorious period. Though Geezer did a lot of lyric writing for me, which he’s very, very good at. It wasn’t an earth-shattering experience for me … It wasn’t really a Black Sabbath album. I’m not saying that one day we might not all go in a room and come up with the perfect Black Sabbath album. But I’ll say, [13] wasn’t recorded the way Black Sabbath recorded records. We’d gone right back past the point where we took charge, back to when someone else had full control of our recording. Which we never did from Vol. 4 onwards.
