INTERVIEW: Mac Sabbath has lasted 10 years, and the band is throwing a party
Photo: Mac Sabbath is celebrating 10 years of being a time-traveling band. Photo courtesy of Jeremy Saffer / Provided by Adrenaline PR with permission.
Mac Sabbath — based in Los Angeles and born in outer space — is a heavy metal tribute band consisting of themed characters who have graced Earthlings with their presence. Ronald Osbourne is the frontman, and he’s joined on stage by Slayer MacCheeze, Grimalice and the Catburglar. They’re costumed identities make a Mac Sabbath concert feel like Halloween, and their musical chops are like a cross between Black Sabbath and Gwar, with some Saturday-morning cartoons thrown in for good measure.
In 2024, Mac Sabbath is celebrating its 10-year anniversary, with concert dates scheduled throughout August and September. This anniversary blows the mind of the man behind the band, a mysterious figure who simply goes by Mike the Manager.
“No one is more shocked than me that this lasted 10 years because it seemed completely volatile from the very beginning,” Mike said with a laugh. “It started out as this weird secret Fight Club thing in a secret turnkey hamburger chain in the basement. It wasn’t for public viewing. It was this small weird secret thing, and then they brought me in and asked me to bring it aboveground. I just thought it was a gag. … It’s really grown by leaps and bounds.”
Mike said Ronald and company are not exactly characters that can be controlled, so their ascent from the underground has been gradual and subtle. He might have some creative ideas for the band, but ultimately the manager needs to ensure the musicians are on board, even tricking them into believing the idea was theirs in the first place.
Whatever chemistry that Mike and the band have, it’s working. Mac Sabbath routinely pack clubs and theaters around the country, bringing their warped riffs on Black Sabbath tunes to adoring fans. Mike has always been amazed by the people who show up for these gigs.
“I always expected Black Sabbath fans,” he said. “I think that was sort of a given for people who don’t know much about this project, but I don’t know if it was that way in the beginning, or if I was just delusional in the beginning. I think it has way more of an appeal for weirdos in general or people who are interested in things that are different or unusual or extreme. It’s people where it’s not enough to go see bands that are in shorts and tennis shoes and T-shirts, something that’s a whole experience, and it’s kind of more of an experience than most every band that I can think of. You would definitely have to go to an arena level to find something that has such a beginning, middle, end, an arc, theatrics, sets, crowd interactions and creating a whole vibe down to smells. It’s literally a feast for the senses. I don’t want to sound too corny and say, ‘I laughed, I cried, it was better than Cats,’ but something like that. It’s really funny, but also really touching. It can be a little bit intimidating, but not so much that kids don’t enjoy it, too. Ronald’s big thing is to make sure that it always stays family friendly and that people can bring their kids. It’s very important to him to get out the message to as many young people as possible.”
Ronald, the vocalist for the outfit, is a time traveler in love with the 1970s, much like his bandmates. This means that concerts can become wormholes to the 1970s, a time of metal music and coloring books, vinyl records and pop-up books. Mike claimed that this time-traveling experience needs to be seen to be believed.
“Even people that think that they kind of get it through watching a video or two on YouTube or something, you kind of have to see the whole beginning and the middle and the end,” he said. “We try to do things to keep it super visual, like there’s no technology past 1979 because Ronald can’t relate to any of that because he lives in the ‘70s and travels somehow through a wormhole into this dimension to save the world from the current state of sustenance and music. I am forced to do things completely non-technological, like the first release was a vinyl flexi disc single that came in a coloring book. OK, what’s going to be next? What’s going to be harder to sell than this, an 8-track tape or something? And then the next thing was a full vinyl, but it came wrapped in a pop-up book, which was an expensive endeavor. It’s not cheap to buy the LP, but it’s like absolutely nothing that you can get from any other band at all. There’s been a couple of record companies that have done these cheesy bad one-fold pop-ups, but this is an amazing three-fold story with all these very technical pop-ups that are all done from paintings from Gris Grimly that did the Pinocchio movie with Guillermo del Toro. That was all his art. It’s just so amazing, and there are few of them left. It will never be printed again because the reason why no record company has ever done that is because it’s a financial disaster. But that’s what happens when you’re dealing with a time traveler.”
Mike didn’t divulge too many secrets about Mac Sabbath; he kept tight-lipped about the who, what, where, when and how of this entire operation. The few details he offered centered on the music and why Ronald and his bandmates idolize Black Sabbath.
“They’re ‘70s characters, so that’s their time,” the manager said. “Black Sabbath and Mac Sabbath had that meeting on the TV show Ozzy and Jack’s World Detour, and Ozzy [Osbourne] asked Ronald, ‘Why Black Sabbath?’ And Ronald said, ‘Well, Black Sabbath is the best source to deliver any message.’ And Ozzy just looked really confused. I think if you’re one of the weirdos, and Black Sabbath appeals to you, and you know a lot about the history of music, you can agree that Black Sabbath is responsible for so many things. It’s the start of heavy metal, but if you think about how spooky it was and creepy, you can attribute that to being the first Gothic music. If you listen to the church bells in the song ‘Black Sabbath,’ or if you listen to something like ‘Paranoid’ in 1970, and you look at the velocity and the speed of the song and the structure of the song, it’s much more like a modern punk rock song or at least a late-‘70s or ‘80s punk rock song than any music you can find in 1970. You can attribute to them creating all the stuff that all us weirdos hold near and dear.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Mac Sabbath is currently on tour celebrating its 10-year anniversary. Click here for more information and tickets.
