Bill Ward is closer to releasing solo music than he has been in years. Speaking to Dan Shinder on Drum Talk TV, the BLACK SABBATH drummer said one album is at the mastering stage and several more are finished behind it.
"Currently we're mastering a new album. And I'm not gonna reveal the name or the title of the album yet," Ward said. "But I've been recording two or three other albums in the last five years… So we have a plethora of recordings that we haven't yet released."
He is not planning to dump them all at once, but he is not planning to trickle them out either. "I'm thinking about actually packaging four or five albums in one package, or three or four albums in one package," he said. "But the newest album that we're finishing, like I say, that we're mastering now, will hopefully come out. We have to negotiate a recording company."
{{youtube:HjI-K49xT6s}}
That last clause is the obstacle. Ward has the records; what he does not have is a deal.
The album at mastering runs to about eighteen tracks, and by his description it is not a heavy record. "It's founded in what I know best, which is a really solid rhythm," he said. "But when I write, I go outside the box in terms of I don't need to necessarily have the same imagery that was so popular with BLACK SABBATH. So, for me, I've gone into orchestrations, choirs, rhythm groups, different vocal groups. And there's a lot of jazz on the album, as well as just straightforward rock or — I wouldn't say the word 'metal', but I don't know if I metallized it. But you can hear where I come from."
Where he comes from means BLACK SABBATH and, before that, MYTHOLOGY — the Carlisle band he and Tony Iommi played in before the two of them met Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler in Aston. He has also kept some tracks built around what he calls huge drum sounds, "for effects and things like that. It's a very colorful album."
He described his approach in blunter terms last year on Mike Stark's LA Radio Sessions: "I've just let everything go. I basically don't give an 'F'... I wanted to play something that plays in my heart and then comes out of my soul." He has been writing his own bass and piano parts, and says he is swearing freely across the new material.
At 78, he is candid about the part he no longer follows. "It's more difficult to get a recording contract," he said. "There's been a real turnaround on even how to buy a record. It's a different world now… I'm fortunate because I have a really good crew. My crew understands what the heck's going on, but quite frankly, I don't. I lived in a different world completely."
He is 78. There are four albums in the drawer.