MAC SABBATH
Where heavy metal meets fast food
Paranoid is among Black Sabbath’s best known songs, but the lyrics are unfamiliar when Ronald Osbourne sings them.
“Finish up the quarter pounder / All that beef we have to find / Need to grow cows faster, faster / Faster, faster all the time.”
The song title has been tweaked along with the message: Pair-abuns, this version is called.
Ronald Osbourne bears no relation to Sabbath’s singer Ozzy Osbourne, and little resemblance aside from eyes ringed in black and a shaggy haircut — although Ronald’s coif is bright red.
He does bear a striking resemblance to another Ronald, surname Mcdonald, the longtime mascot of Mcdonald’s restaurants.
Mac Sabbath is a California-based heavy metal band, which some call a Black Sabbath tribute and others call a parody. By their lyrics and their personas, there’s clearly another inspiration at play: fast food.
On guitar, Slayer Maccheeze lives up to both of his names, nailing solos with a giant cheeseburger for a head, a nod to the old Mcdonald’s character, Mayor Mccheese.
Grimalice bears Grimace’s big purple likeness, but his face is zanier and his puffy hands manage to play bass guitar.
On drums, the Catburglar resembles KISS’S Peter Criss in a Hamburglar costume.
To the tune of Iron Man, their song Frying Pan goes, “Fixing your daily bread / Hope this pan’s not made of lead / A big red curly hair / Gave that customer quite a scare.”
“It’s very much pointing out all the hypocrisy and the evil of fast food and junk food,” Mac Sabbath’s manager, Mike Odd, explained in a phone interview.
“It’s very interesting listening to almost every single word rhyme with the same word in the Black Sabbath song, but sometimes one line is one word because it’s some giant chemical that’s 17 syllables long.”
Their music is not an endorsement, but a critique on fast food and the culture that bred it.
Odd said his journey with the band began in a hamburger restaurant in Los Angeles about four years ago. As the owner of a “freak museum and oddities shop,” the Rosemary’s Billygoat Odditorium, he said he was tipped off to something strange.
“I’m sitting in this place waiting for something to happen and this tornado of a clown, this red and yellow mess, just spun into this place with his Skeletor makeup on and started spewing all these science fiction-type concepts,” Odd claimed.
“(I’m) literally leaning up against a bag of bleached hamburger buns and watching these mutated fastfood mascots just slay these Black Sabbath riffs and scream about GMOS and Monsanto.
“(Ronald) insists that he travels through time in this time-space continuum thing from the 1970s to … bring us back to where food and music were still organic and it was like real food and Black Sabbath.” OK, but really?
“Everything that I’m telling you is true. I mean, I can’t confirm or deny the fact that he’s actually travelling through time, but this is what I’m dealing with, let me tell you,” Odd said, laughing.
It seems an unlikely story and Ronald doesn’t do interviews — “he wants to remain completely anonymous,” Odd said.
Whatever their origin, sometimes it’s worth suspending disbelief for the sake of fun.
Canadian audiences get their first taste of Mac Sabbath live, with seven tour dates beginning in Calgary on Wednesday, Edmonton on Thursday, Saskatoon on Friday and Regina on Saturday, followed by Winnipeg, Hamilton and Toronto.
“It’s like birthday party magic tricks and giant inflatable burgers bouncing in the crowds and lasereyed clowns,” said Odd, “and (Ronald has) got this grill in front of him where he’s flipping burgers and it’s smoking. It’s an arena-sized rock stage show crammed onto a clubsized stage.”
Joining Mac Sabbath is Franks & Deans, a punk-rock Rat Pack cover band based in Las Vegas.
“They’re amazing, too, so get down there early and see Franks & Deans,” Odd said.
In Regina, catch Mac Sabbath at the University of Regina Riddell Centre multipurpose room on Saturday. Doors at 8 p.m. Tickets are $18 in advance at ticketfly.com, Vintage Vinyl and Madame Yes, or $23 at the door. This is an all-ages show.