Tony Iommi is finally ready to talk about the solo album he has been chipping away at for years. The BLACK SABBATH founder and guitarist is expected to reveal the first details of the record during a YouTube livestream on Wednesday, July 29 at 7:30 a.m. PDT / 10:30 a.m. EDT / 3:30 p.m. BST. A short teaser for an accompanying music video has already surfaced.
If it arrives as expected, the record will be Iommi's third solo full-length, after 2000's star-studded “Iommi” and 2005's “Fused” — the latter made with ex-DEEP PURPLE bassist and vocalist Glenn Hughes and drummer Kenny Aronoff.
Iommi last discussed the project in detail during a July 2025 appearance on SiriusXM's “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk”, where he explained that work had been paused so he could prepare for BLACK SABBATH's farewell performance. “I was doing my own album until [the ‘Back To The Beginning’ event] came up, and then, of course, I had to stop and concentrate on [preparing for] the SABBATH [performance],” he said. “But I'm continuing on trying to finish off what I started with this album. And then who knows what I'm gonna do then?”
Asked whether the album would follow the multi-vocalist template of “Iommi”, the guitarist indicated it has taken a different shape. “At the moment, no. I've got one singer on it at the moment, which I originally thought of different singers,” he said. “But it started off as it's gonna be an instrumental album, and it's gone from I've got some instrumental stuff, but then I thought, ‘Oh, I wanna try it with a singer.’ And so that's what I've been doing.”
Iommi has trickled out new music sporadically over the past five years, including 2021's “Scent Of Dark” and 2024's instrumental “Deified”, both produced with longtime collaborator Mike Exeter and both tied to fragrance releases created with perfumer Sergio Momo. He has previously said he has “four or five hundred” unused riffs stored on his phone.
Speaking to Full Metal Jackie in June 2024, Iommi confirmed the goal was a proper album rather than a string of one-off singles: “No, I'm gonna do a record. And I've got a lot of stuff. But now we're actually getting around to sort of putting it together, myself and the engineer… And there's no pressure. I can just do it — I don't have to do it by next week.”
The announcement lands a little over a year after the July 5, 2025 “Back To The Beginning” event at Villa Park in Birmingham, which reunited the original BLACK SABBATH lineup for the final time and preceded Ozzy Osbourne's death on July 22, 2025.