3 Non-Metal Artists Who Were Influenced by Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath pioneered heavy metal, but the iconic band’s influence has reached much farther than any single genre of music. Ozzy Osbourne delivered dark lyrics with melodies that echoed The Beatles. And this opposites-attract combination of gloom and tenderness has been used by countless bands since. Let’s have a look at three non-metal artists who were also influenced by Black Sabbath.

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Julian Casablancas

I didn’t notice any heavy metal in The Strokes until “Juicebox”, the debut single from the band’s 2005 release, First Impressions Of Earth. It sounded like Guns N’ Roses, an unexpected turn from America’s leading garage rock revivalists. However, feeling restless in The Strokes, singer Julian Casablancas said he wanted to explore new creative ground. He told Vulture in 2018, “I want to evolve and do something even more challenging: Black Sabbath, Nirvana, some Doors stuff—music that’s not mainstream but breaks into the mainstream.”

In Casablancas’s other band, The Voidz, he achieves his goals. Check out the metal turn in “Prophecy Of The Dragon”, where The Strokes’ frontman goes full Ozzy Osbourne over a doom metal riff Tony Iommi might have written.

Nirvana

If you needed to describe Nirvana to an alien, you could say, “Think Black Sabbath meets The Beatles.” Especially on Nirvana’s debut, Bleach, which features slow distorted grooves and catchy melodies. When mixing Nevermind, producer Butch Vig said Kurt Cobain wanted the album to sound like Black Sabbath. But it ended up more polished than Cobain wanted. So for its follow-up, the band hired Steve Albini to capture them as raw as possible.

Dave Grohl also said of Bleach, “There’s a lot of Sabbath in that, for sure.” Black Sabbath offered Cobain a connection to something from outside his hometown of Aberdeen. Heavy metal, punk, and grunge all share a subculture of kids suffering from alienation, hopelessness, and depression. So Birmingham, England, in 1968, probably didn’t feel much different from Cobain’s home in Washington state in 1987.

Dinosaur Jr.

J Mascis and Lou Barlow had played together in a hardcore punk band in high school called Deep Wound. But after high school, they formed Dinosaur Jr., which combines the slow, heavy riffs of Black Sabbath with Neil Young’s folk rock.

Mascis borrowed from classic rock and played his Fender Jazzmaster with high levels of fuzz and feedback, creating a pathway for the future rise of alternative rock. He also stood apart for burning guitar solos in a punk-adjacent band, something frowned upon in the indie scene. You can hear Dinosaur Jr.’s influence in Nirvana, Radiohead, My Bloody Valentine, and, more recently, Kurt Vile. This also shows Black Sabbath’s indirect shaping of these artists.

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