Geezer Butler recently sat down with 96.7 KCAL Rocks at NAMM to talk about the recording of the new Black Sabbath album,
"None of us have been drinking or doing drugs or anything. It’s a bit more professional in that way. We stuck to a schedule: every day we’d go in at one o’clock and finished at six. Five hours a day and that’s it."
"It’s got the feel of the first three albums, back to the basic rawness. The lyrics are about life, death, doom and everything else. You get Prozac with each album."
On the band's reason to hire Rage Against the Machine drummer Brad Wilk to replace original drummer Bill Ward. Butler says it was producer Rick Rubin who suggested the band use Wilk, "He didn’t want a typical heavy metal drummer on the album because it’s not really a heavy metal album. It’s more heavy rock.....Rick suggested Brad because he’s more in the vein of Bill Ward. We jammed with him and he sounded great with the stuff, so we went with that. We’re sort of back to the way we used to be in the 70s and that’s Brad’s feel – a sort of jazzy, bluesy feel."
Butler also commented on guitarist Tony Iommi's ongoing cancer treatments saying that the legendary guitarist continues to respond well.