The year is 1970, and Black Sabbath’s War Pigs is about to change heavy music forever.

In just under eight volcanic minutes, four working-class kids from Birmingham turned a jam-session riff into an anti-war anthem that resonates just as much today as it did 54 years ago. This is the story of Black Sabbath’s Infamous War Pigs, how it came together, the meaning behind the lyrics and how five decades later it remains one of the most iconic heavy metal songs of all time.

Black Sabbath: War Pigs Origins

London, UK, early 1970. The smell of cigarette smoke hangs over Regent Sound Studios. Geezer Butler checks his bass tuning while producer Rodger Bain cues the tape. Tony Iommi, on a relentless path of recovery and refinement since losing the tips of two fingers in a factory accident in 1965, raises his Gibson SG, fingertips still tender from last night’s club set. Behind the kit, Bill Ward is warming the toms with muted thumps that rattle the ashtrays. They hit record, the red bulb glows, the siren screams, and Ozzy Osbourne leans into the mic and bellows:

“Generals gathered in their masses, just like witches at black masses.”

But this isn’t the song’s beginning. Two years earlier, War Pigs was taking shape, according to Tony Iommi’s autobiography, from “a grim place in Zurich,” where the band filled marathon sets with loose jams. One of them, then titled ‘Walpurgis’, stuck. As Geezer Butler would later explain to Noisecreep: “Walpurgis is sort of like Christmas for Satanists. And to me, war was the big Satan.”

Their record label, Vertigo, baulked at the occult flavour, so the title became ‘War Pigs’ but the lyrics stayed put.

At this time, Great Britain had ended mandatory national service, yet the Vietnam War dominated the headlines, with many Brits fearing they would get pulled into the war. Geezer Butler remembers when speaking with Bryan Reesman in 2014: “I was dreading being called up.” That fear seeped into every note, and he would write of officers who “treat people just like pawns in chess”, a pointed metaphor for real-world conscription.

Yet Ozzy admitted to Carol Clerk, “We knew nothing about Vietnam. It’s just an anti-war song”. But it’s that tension and lived anxiety which gives the track its bite. Producer Roger Bain would also add the siren and speed up the ending without asking, but when the band heard the playback, they loved it.

When Sabbath delivered the masters, Vertigo worried American listeners in 1970 wouldn’t buy a record literally called War Pigs. So they retitled the album to Paranoid to soften the blow. They also renamed the song in two parts to “War Pigs / Luke’s Wall” for the US release. This gave the impression of it being two songs rather than one, making War Pigs feel shorter as a track and artificially padding out the album with more songs to get a minimum of 10 tracks, which the label often required.

War Pigs Lyrical Meaning

Speaking further about War Pigs to Noise Creep in 2010, Geezer Butler explained about the song:

It wasn’t about politics or government or anything. It was evil. So I was saying “generals gathered in the masses/just like witches at black masses” to make an analogy. But when we brought it to the record company, they thought ‘Walpurgis’ sounded too Satanic. And that’s when we turned it into ‘War Pigs.’ But we didn’t change the lyrics, because they were already finished.

We weren’t into flower power and good vibes. That was crap to us, because from where we were, everything was bleak and dark.

Black Sabbath War Pigs Lyrics In Full

Back To The Beginning & Beyond

Some classics sell you hope: ‘War Pigs’ sells you a mirror. Look into it long enough and you’ll see both the generals and, uncomfortably, a sense of history repeating itself over and over.

The war machine may keep turning, but thanks to four Brummie misfits, its soundtrack continuously forces us to think more deeply about war, its justifications, the human cost, and the difficulties of bringing it to an end.

As Black Sabbath wrap up their final ever performance at Back To The Beginning, it brings the journey full circle, ending barely a mile from the factories where Tony Iommi lost his fingertips and where Geezer Butler first scribbled the words “generals gathered in their masses.”

Yet even when the house lights rise, the legacy will keep humming through the streets of Birmingham and beyond. The Home of Metal “Black Sabbath – 50 Years” exhibition already draws record crowds to the city’s Museum & Art Gallery, filling halls with stage clothes, battered amps and handwritten lyric sheets. A new 120-foot mural now stretches the length of Navigation Street, and fans queue for selfies outside the humble terraced houses where the band rehearsed their earliest riffs.

As Back to the Beginning lowers the curtain, Sabbath’s soundtrack to dissent will echo on, through museum glass, street-art bricks, and every speaker that continues to crank the opening siren. For as long as power reaches for the next war, someone will drop the needle on ‘War Pigs’ and let four Brummie misfits remind the world that no more war pigs have the power.

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