Since Ozzy Osbourne‘s death in July, bands of all stripes have been performing covers of his solo catalogue or his work in Black Sabbath, often in concert. System of a Down is one of the bands covering Sabbath as a tribute to Ozzy, on their summer tour. The difference with the SOAD cover is that they first recorded their version of Sabbath’s “Snowblind” back in 2000 for a tribute album. So they had this one in the bag and added it to their current setlist after Ozzy’s death.
This version comes from a show in Chicago at the beginning of September. And it begins with the crowd chanting “Ozzy” with guitar and vocalist Daron Malakian exhorting them to chant louder. The defining feature of SOAD’s cover of “Snowblind” is what you might expect – everything is amped up. The song is played at a faster tempo, mostly, with the main riff in particular played much faster. Befitting SOAD’s famous dynamics, the soft verses stand out as even softer, relatively, in this version, at least until the guitar solo. The bridge from the original is also played faster and functions as the kind of break we’d expect in a more recent metal genre, or a SOAD song, rather than in a Sabbath song.
Though, they haven’t played the cover in something like 20 years, it still sounds fresh and it’s clear they’re having fun. It’s not one of Sabbath’s most famous songs so it doesn’t spur a crowd singalong like so many other Ozzy tributes this summer (also, it’s fast!), but it’s great to hear a band that really loves Sabbath break out an old tribute.
