The always omnipresent “Iron Man,” Black Sabbath guitarist and co-founder Tony Iommi, can now add another accolade to his illustrious career: an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from Coventry University in Coventry, England “in recognition of his contribution to the world of popular music.”

You can view the video here below of Iommi receiving the honorary doctorate last week.

After basically re-sculpting and redefining the entire hard rock genre, and then using what he did in Sabbath as a precursor to the Heavy Metal boom that followed and continues to be passionately revered by scores of fans globally, Tony Iommi created riffs for a multitude of songs that are instantly recognizable to the sound, attitude, and style of the band, by the staunchest fan or the lightest Sabbath treader.

Black Sabbath is coming to Universal Studios Hollywood!

This fall, the theme park’s famed Halloween Horror Nights will feature an all-original horror-themed 3D maze called Black Sabbath: 13 3D, a new attraction based on the legendary band’s lyrics that will also include scenes inspired by their latest album, 13.

While going through the attraction, guests will reportedly face Lucifer and his bride, blood-soaked dead bodies, and bubbling pools of “radioactive water,” all while songs inspired by classic Black Sabbath tunes “Luke’s Wall,” “Iron Man,” “Paranoid,” “War Pigs,” “Electric Funeral,” and the haunting “Black Sabbath” boom at high volumes through the confines of the maze.

The maze’s design contains “horrifying graveyards, disturbing madhouses, and bone-chilling battlefields,” along with imagery of the godfathers of heavy metal themselves – Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, and Geezer Butler, the co-founders of Black Sabbath, currently on tour promoting 13, their first studio album together in 35 years.

Check out the announcement video here below, which includes a preview of the new attraction.

Classic Albums: Black Sabbath – Paranoid
Netflix | Amazon | Google Play | YouTube
DVD | Blu-ray
Directed by Matthew Longfellow
Starring Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler, Bill Ward, Henry Rollins, Jim Simpson, Tony Allom, Deena Weinstein
Eagle Rock Entertainment
Originally Released: June 30, 2010

With drummer Bill Ward‘s birthday today, May 5, and with all the news surrounding the upcoming Black Sabbath album, 13, (despite Ward not being involved), I thought it would be timely to delve back into the past for this week’s streaming review. This week, we take a look at the band’s classic album called Paranoid, a ground-breaking release that established them as an international phenomenal, and put Black Sabbath’s name down on the history books as the first heavy metal band.

The significance of Paranoid, in union with the other first four releases by Black Sabbath, is unparalleled. Combining musical influences of rock and roll, blues, jazz, swing, and classical; and swarming it among darker occultist lyrical topics, the band laid down a basis that would not only establish their own careers, but also form the basis for all metal bands that would follow as well as all of the subgenres to break off from metal. Black Sabbath’s contributions to the early development of metal are incomparable to all who would follow.

The heart of Hollywood hosted an exclusive invite-only press listening party last night for the new, highly anticipated upcoming Black Sabbath album, entitled 13. The album marks the first time in 35 years that original members Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler, and Tony Iommi have created and recorded original music on a studio release.

The definitely not black tie affair was held at the Ricardo Montalban Theater on Vine Street just off Hollywood Boulevard in the late afternoon on April 10, 2013. Limited to about only 40 journalists, yours truly was fortunate enough to be one of the members of an audience primed and ready to be in essence the first people to listen to the new album, aside from those involved in its recording (such as people like producer Rick Rubin and drummer Brad Wilk, who is playing in Sabbath in place of original Sabbath drummer Bill Ward, a move that has been rather polarizing to many die hard Sabbath fanatics). In a year marked by new musical releases by legendary rock artists like David Bowie and Iggy and The Stooges, Black Sabbath’s 13 also has created that same kind of neon electric buzz among the rock and music community.

Tony Iommi, whose bone crunching power riffs have been a staple of the sound and energy of the legendary English group Black Sabbath, celebrates his birthday today!

Almost no other guitarist in the history of the instrument was more innovative in perfecting that “power riff,” the easy yet extremely omnipotent guitar chord which sets a tone and pitch of a song, albeit a hard rock one. Iommi was like a power riff factory, churning them out in rapid, breathtaking succession on every Black Sabbath record since the band’s debut release in 1969. From the very first song on that album, the self-titled track in which Iommi’s riff thunders in like an equestrian out of control, a jouster with a lance coming right out of the speaker grill, it set the style for the entire Sabbath sound which would follow for decades.