Culture
Mac Sabbath’s manager Mike Odd talks about the band’s time-traveling past, the state of the fast food industry, and drive-thru metal
By: Nicholas Kobe
Posted on:
CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOUB) – Your eyes do not deceive you.
Mac Sabbath is a real band and they really do reimagine the discography of Black Sabbath to be about fast food. The “drive-thru metal” band has been at it since 2014.
Featuring the talents of vocalist Ronald Osbourne, guitarist Slayer MacCheese, bassist Grimalice “I can’t believe it’s not Butler” and drummer Catburglar, Mac Sabbath’s goal is to warn humanity of fast food’s dangers. It seems to be working.
Ever since breaking through with their rendition of Paranoid reimagined as Pair-a-buns, Mac Sabbath has been consistently touring around the world. The band has even performed for the “Prince of Darkness” himself, Ozzy Osbourne, who said the band was “funny as f*ck.”
As the band continues to deliver surprise after surprise right off the fryer it’s no wonder fans around the world are lovin’ it.
While the band remains as mysterious as fast food mascots can be, WOUB’s Nicholas Kobe was able to chat with Mac Sabbath’s manager Mike Odd, before their November 5 show at TempleLive in Cleveland.
Find a transcript of the conversation edited for length and clarity, below.
If you had to describe it in one sentence to anyone who is unfamiliar, what is Mac Sabbath?
Mike Odd:
Well, that’s the rub, isn’t it? I mean, part of the reason why I think it is so interesting is it’s not really headline news. It’s not really easy to describe in one sentence. You know what I’m saying? I guess if run-on sentences are allowed, it’s sort of like mutated fast food mascots, playing Black Sabbath songs, parody style; condemning the drive-through lifestyle and making one think about their choices in food. But it’s a real multimedia comedy shock-rock theatrical experience – an arena-size stage show crammed into a club size venue stage.
Nicholas Kobe:
That’s a good way to put it. I mean, the reason I asked that question is just, I guess I just didn’t know where to start with Mac Sabbath. Where do we begin?
Mike Odd (02:33):
The problem is I don’t know where to stop.
Nicholas Kobe:
That’s very true. I guess my first question to you is, as Mac Sabbath’s manager, how often do you actually eat at McDonald’s?
Mike Odd:
Oh boy. I have no idea what you’re talking about. The word that you just said I’ve never heard before. I live in a dimension where lawyers don’t let me answer those sorts of questions.
The funniest thing about the guys is they’ve created this drive-through metal genre, and the instant thing to assume is that it is a pro-drive-through, but if you delve into the lyrics, you’ll see that the entire idea – supposedly – from what Ronald says, is that they’re traveling in a wormhole in time and space from the ’70s to save us all from the current state of food and music and get us back to a time where it all was more organic. So the idea is not burgers and fries per se, but to be sort of focused on how the drive-through lifestyle is leading us into this sort of a government-led dystopian nightmare. So that being said, we try to avoid the drive-through as much as possible.
Nicholas Kobe:
It’s kind of antithetical to what you guys are going for.
Mike Odd:
Plus the tour rig doesn’t fit through the drive-through anyway.
Nicholas Kobe:
So from your chats with Ronald and the other members of the band, what exactly was the moment that kind of prompted them to take it upon themselves to travel through this interdimensional wormhole and warn us?
Mike Odd:
Well, I’m still trying to figure that out, and he doesn’t normally make a lot of sense when we have these sorts of conversations, so I have to kind of put things together myself. He was instrumental in putting together the pop-up book album with Grimalice and if you follow the narrative in the pop-up book, it almost looks like on the first layout that they start out as these fast food workers, and then in the second layout, they are inspired by rock ‘n’ roll and Black Sabbath and sort of transcend this lifestyle and become enlightened. Then in the last layout, there’s this kind of this super green, bright, vegetation-filled sort of utopia of, I dunno, paradise and vegetables or something. Somewhere in there is your answer. When the whole thing happened with the TV show with Ozzy, Ozzy was asking “Why?”
Nicholas Kobe:
It’s a good question!
Mike Odd:
Ronald was talking about how Ozzy and Black Sabbath were here to warn the world about evil; and now Mac Sabbath is here to warn the world about the evils of fast food, and that Black Sabbath is the best delivery system for any message that you’re trying to get out there.
Nicholas Kobe:
We’re going down the natural pipeline where they’re going to start putting PSAs to the tune of War Pigs.
Mike Odd:
Right, exactly.
Nicholas Kobe:
So I guess when you guys decide to write a new song, how do you get the inspiration for the lyrics? Is it just what you observe in the world, or is there a process the band goes through to kind of get that inspiration for something else to talk about?
Mike Odd:
Well, he doesn’t seem to really talk about anything else.
Nicholas Kobe:
True. That’s true.
Mike Odd:
Can’t even really think of a band whose every single song is focused on the same message.
Nicholas Kobe:
I guess if I had to reword the question, how do they keep coming up with more things to say about fast food?
Mike Odd:
Well, I think that that’s sort of like a self-cleaning oven because more and more terrible things keep happening, and more and more terrible things keep coming to light. Like, a couple of days ago was National Cheeseburger Day and the day before National Cheeseburger Day, a nationwide recall was announced regarding all the fast food places for E. coli for hamburger meat. So it’s super ironic when on the 17th, they’re announcing this recall to get rid of all this E. coli-infested hamburger meat and on the 18th, they’re trying to get rid of all their burgers. The burgers are 19 cents here, 10 cents there, and free over there. With comedy like that, in reality, they’re pretty much just documentarians.
Nicholas Kobe:
So reaching kind of through the discography, the era of Black Sabbath in which the group is picking songs to spread their message through, do you think they would ever consider doing any later era Black Sabbath stuff, or considering they’re from the ’70s, they’re just going to stick with that?
Mike Odd:
Yeah, that’s what it seems like to me. It seems like this symbiotic relationship with Ozzy is very good. But who knows, maybe they’ll do some song with Baloney Martin (“Baloney Martin” is parodying “Tony Martin,” Black Sabbath’s vocalist in the late ’80s and ’90s).
Nicholas Kobe:
So how does the general public, especially at a festival or other setting that’s not a headline show, how do they typically react to what you guys do?
Mike Odd:
Yeah, it’s so interesting that you say that because it’s so hard for me to decide what I enjoy more. When the band is headlining, they’re obviously able to do their full show and they’re playing in front of a crowd that all is really excited to see them and really already supportive of what they do. So they’re really, really hot for it and so that’s just incredible to watch. But then being at a festival and watching people casually walk by and being surprised and watching their faces unfold as this thing happens is also priceless.
Nicholas Kobe:
What is the general vibe from the audience at a headline Mac Sabbath show?
Mike Odd:
Even though a lot of them know what to expect, there’s definitely a mind-losing mentality that goes on with it because it unfolds in a way that you don’t really expect. People think that they can understand it by watching it a little bit on YouTube or something, but the show kind of unfolds sort of like a play – in a way. So while they’re watching it unfold, I think they’re still very surprised if they’ve never seen it live before. Every single person that I’ve talked to, whether it be a promoter or an agent or a fan or whoever it is that sees it for the first time, says, ‘I had no idea it was going to be like that.’ So there’s definitely surprise factors within the surprise that it exists.
Nicholas Kobe:
It’s like an onion?
Mike Odd:
Yes. There are Easter eggs in there.
Nicholas Kobe:
So the band has this mission to spread a message about the dangers of fast food. Are they all united in their opinions, or is there any fighting within the band?
Mike Odd:
They’re a rock band. There would never be any fighting.
Nicholas Kobe:
Yeah. Obviously, not, rock bands never fight about anything.
Mike Odd:
No, I think you have it right on that. It definitely unites them and makes it all a wonderful symbiotic experience.
Nicholas Kobe (18:20):
Absolutely. Obviously Black Sabbath was the method you guys used to deliver this message – but do you think there are any other bands or artists from that time or from another time that would also be good at delivering a similar type of message?
Mike Odd:
Oh, like Burger King Crimson or something like that? The other one I’ve heard is Burger King Diamond, but that’s his nemesis apparently, so don’t think we’re allowed to talk about that. I mean, his whole thing is that he is like, ‘Oh, these other drive-through metal bands…’ whoever it is that he’s ripping on Cina Bon Jovi or K/F/C/D/C or whoever, I think that he’s making fun of them because somehow this is an organic relationship with these two things, and those other things seem like they’d be forced or something like that.
Nicholas Kobe:
So the ethos is Black Sabbath we talked about earlier? That is it?
Mike Odd:
Yeah. You’ll talk to people who’ll be like, ‘Oh, Led Zeppelin invented heavy metal.’ It’s like, wait a second here. We’re talking about a guitar player who worked in a steel factory in Birmingham – actual heavy metal sliced off his fingers. Then when he adjusted his fingers to go back to playing guitar, it changed the sound of the guitar and made a completely new sound. It created, not just a genre of music, but a whole style of music that influenced many genres of music. It just changed music completely because heavy metal cut off a guy’s fingers, literally. I don’t want to hear about Led Zep In-N-Out! It’s not even on the table. If listen to the velocity of a song like Paranoid in 1970, it sounds like a punk rock song from the late ’80s. Then if you think about all the spooky stuff that they were doing that no one else was doing that influenced gothic-type genres, it’s basically every genre that we weirdos hold near and dear, Black Sabbath is responsible for. It’s like a foundation that is sort of irreplaceable. You can’t just have Jethro Tollhouse Cookies or something all of a sudden come along.
Nicholas Kobe:
That makes perfect sense. So my question for you also is, as the band has kind of gone on through the years and they’ve obviously been trying to spread this message, do you feel like just as their manager, the fast food industry has gotten better or gotten worse?
Mike Odd:
Over the years? Both. The fight between the dark side and the light side force still goes on who knows what we have up next? Who knows what we have coming up with this Kill-Less Meat and all kinds of new technologies? Technology seems to be the enemy of health food, and that’s really unfortunate that we can’t live in a society where technology would help with that. But as Ronald says, we have to be very careful what we’re doing and we have to do a lot of research and call things out for what they are and speak out so we won’t continue to be poisoned by our governments. Let’s waltz into the future in the best way that we can.
Nicholas Kobe:
Yeah. Speaking of the future, I guess the only question I have for you is what’s next for Mac Sabbath? What are the plans from here to get bigger and better?
Mike Odd:
I wish I knew.
Nicholas Kobe:
Ronald doesn’t tell you these kinds of things?
Mike Odd:
For most bands, the future tends to be in technology and this band seems to be going the other direction. So I guess, I don’t know, I guess they will crawl back into the womb. I don’t know what the finale is here.
Nicholas Kobe:
It is oddly comforting to know that their manager is just as in the dark as I am.