The Death of Ozzy and the Death of Heavy Metal as We Know It

Forty-four years ago, KISS in «Music From The Elder» (1981) sang about «a world without heroes.» Another song, sung by Ricardo Iorio but composed by Roque Narvaja for a genre completely unrelated to Rock and its derivatives, said: «aunque esos niños salgan del colegio hablando de otros héroes, que los míos ya son viejos» (although when leaving school those children talk about other heroes, because mine are already old.)

The death of Ozzy Osbourne last Tuesday, July 22nd, not only brings sorrow but emphasizes more clearly the inexorable end of a generation and the absence of replacement. I remember that during an informal conversation with the Argentine-Spanish essayist Blas Matamoro, a great connoisseur of music, he pointed out to me that each genre reaches its peak and then becomes just another part of the repertoire. It would be absurd to say that «Jazz died,» but certainly, it doesn’t have the popularity it had in 1950. It’s undeniable that Heavy Metal is experiencing the same fate. Moreover, far from meaning something profound or distinctive, it’s commercialized as a cultural product like brightly colored sneakers. Even more tragic, it’s very far from being anything resembling cultural rebellion.

Ozzy’s death marks the beginning of the end of a foundational generation that transformed popular music forever. We’re not just talking about Metal: the members of BLACK SABBATH, born between 1948 and 1949, belong to the same cohort as THE BEATLES, ROLLING STONES, LED ZEPPELIN, and PINK FLOYD. This generation, which revolutionized music between the mid-sixties and early seventies, now faces its inevitable biological extinction. Tony Iommi is 77 years old, Geezer Butler 76, while figures like Paul McCartney (83) and Mick Jagger (82) defy time, but cannot defeat it forever.

Metal emerged from Birmingham as a direct expression of British industrial decay. John Michael Osbourne – son of a toolmaker at the General Electric Company, far from any musical conservatory – along with his BLACK SABBATH companions musically articulated what sociologist Richard Sennett described as the «corrosion of character» in post-industrial societies. Their heavy sound wasn’t an aesthetic pose, but the natural vocabulary of those living through the decomposition of the working world. In this sense, original Metal operated as what Pierre Bourdieu called «cultural capital» of the working classes: a way to convert class experience into economic value without the mediation of traditional legitimizing institutions.

Paradoxically, those we believed immortal also have expiration dates. METALLICA, formed in 1981, sees James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich pass 60 years old. Dave Mustaine of MEGADETH is 63, while Kerry King of SLAYER just turned 61. The Thrash Metal generation, which seemed eternal in the eighties, inexorably approaches the same biological crossroads as their predecessors. IRON MAIDEN, with Bruce Dickinson at 66, maintains eclectic activity that only postpones the inevitable.

But beyond natural mortality, what really died was the business model that allowed cultural authenticity to become a mass phenomenon. As music historian Simon Reynolds documents, the system of record labels, physical distribution, and specialized media created an ecosystem where genuine innovation could reach global audiences. Metal functioned as cultural industry in the most literal sense: it produced culture that generated industry.

Today that model has collapsed. Digital platforms have atomized musical consumption into hyper-specialized niches where novelty is measured in weeks, not decades. What Walter Benjamin identified as the loss of «aura» finds its clearest manifestation here: Metal reproduces infinitely, but has lost its capacity for shock, its original disruptive power. It has become cultural commodity, manageable and segmentable like any other entertainment product.

The transformation is evident in new musical production. Contemporary Metal exponents don’t emerge from specific social conditions, but from algorithms that identify market gaps. The aesthetic remains, but the social content has been emptied. As Fredric Jameson points out in his analyses of postmodern pastiche, the surface is reproduced without the substrate that generated it. The result is Metal that simulates rebellion, but rebels against nothing specific, nor does anyone channel it.

Ozzy embodied this complete transition. From the young man who worked in a Birmingham slaughterhouse to the television patriarch who managed his madness as family entertainment, his biography summarizes the passage from class authenticity to marketing simulation. His death definitively closes the possibility that similar figures might emerge from proletarian anonymity to conquer global culture.

The demographic reality is implacable. In a decade, most of the founding members of BLACK SABBATH, LED ZEPPELIN, DEEP PURPLE, and JUDAS PRIEST will have disappeared. In two decades, it will be METALLICA’s, MEGADETH’s, and SLAYER’s turn. There will be no replacements because the conditions that allowed their emergence no longer exist. Metal will survive as a musical form, but its capacity to articulate genuine social experiences was exhausted when it became completely integrated into the entertainment industry.

The new musical «heroes,» if they emerge, will have to invent completely different languages to escape the immediate capture of algorithmic marketing. Metal fulfilled its historical function as a vehicle of expression and ascension for a specific generation of working-class youth. With Ozzy’s death, that era definitively comes to an end. What remains is administered nostalgia, a museum of a rebellion that can no longer be reproduced under current conditions of cultural production.

Facundo Guadagno