“Did you wear all black?”
“You can’t even understand the words.”
“So you just punch each other at these concerts?”
There’s a subtle irritation that comes from being immersed in a community of shared meaning—centered around an art form that names something true about your experience—only to be met with confusion or judgment by people who just don’t get it. Metalheads know this irritation well.
But that sense of being judged was also part of the appeal: the lure of a unique identity, especially one that rubbed against what was considered “decent” in polite company. Nothing felt worse than being seen as normal—and by extension, forgettable.
It was in the community that Heavy Metal created where I found room to play and get weird. I went to concerts with friends, drove across the country for hours listening to records, and covered my arms in clever (often inappropriate) wristbands from Hot Topic. I wore T-shirts to display my allegiances and drew hard boundaries to reinforce them.
The more well-meaning adults told me they couldn’t imagine Jesus being at that kind of concert, the more I dug my heels in. When Ozzy Osbourne died last week at the age of 76, I found myself thinking about those times and spaces—and why they still linger.
The early 2000s were a hell of a time to be a headbanger and Ozzy was one of the elders. His style, voice, and excess became a testament to his radical inability to care what others thought, making him a sort of icon for a bunch of self-conscious teens desperate to convince the world we didn’t care either.
But we did care—a lot. And we needed space to work that out.
For those of us navigating both communities of faith and Metal, only one of them made space for it. The other just didn’t have it in them.
I could explore transcendence with Black Sabbath long before I could with whatever banal CCM tune we sang in the Sanctuary. Before I learned about the value of fairy stories from Tolkien, Ozzy insisted he saw them wearing boots and dancing with a dwarf.
Behind the Wall of Sleep carried a Lovecraftian energy, while Planet Caravan shimmered like an astral plane. Horrific and fantastical tales, spilling over with spellcraft.
While pastors in a post-9/11 world preached about noble enemies and just wars, Ozzy preached against the war pigs—demonic figures, brainwashed by death and hatred, indifferent to the human cost. He sang of the lingering violence we inherit: we are “heirs of a Cold War,” mentally numb inheritors of trouble. As he says later in that same song, we’re going off the rails on a crazy train.
While some pastors delivered apocalyptic fury, I discovered that Ozzy named hope:
“Now in darkness, world stops turning / Ashes where the bodies burning / No more war pigs have the power / Hand of God has struck the hour”
“Maybe it’s not too late / To learn how to love and forget how to hate”
Before anyone explained the word imprecatory to me, bands like Black Sabbath gave us space to sing Psalms of Doom. These odd, growling, skull-crushing tunes told the truth about the world’s darkness—and hinted at the possibility of something more.
Most importantly, though, the way they did it was all so heavy; the first ideal for any metal lover.
I’m not interested in over-romanticizing Ozzy as some kind of prophet. He didn’t even write most of the lyrics I quoted above.
But this isn’t really about the man. It’s about what he represented in the imagination of a teenager at the turn of the century—one who was negotiating how to live in spaces both sacred and profane, learning that neither space fully lived up to what they claimed to hold.
Looking back—sometimes smiling, more often cringing—I’m grateful for those communities that allowed the space to be little freaks for a while. They offered a counter-testimony to the clean, polite narratives we often found in church. Now that I’m the adult and the pastor, I give thanks—and I wonder.
I wonder about the subtle judgments I pass. I wonder about those Spirit-filled places I can’t see, the ones I can’t possibly imagine God to be in. I wonder about the churches I serve and will serve, if they will succumb to fear or build a sorely needed depth of welcome.
I wonder about the spaces we call profane and whether I am missing all the sacred stuff present within.
Just because I don’t get it.
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Chris Murphy is Director of Community Formation at Steele Creek Presbyterian at Pleasant Hill in Charlotte, NC. He is a Baptist minister connected to CBF and Alliance of Baptists.
