War Pigs

by Twisted History producer John Kelly, research by Saint Anne

From, The Twisted of Animal Warfare Podcast

Large: I was listening to a song called War Pigs by Black Sabbath the other day:

Lyrics:

Generals gathered in their masses, just like witches at black masses. Evil minds that plot destruction, Sorcerer of death's construction. In the fields the bodies burning, as the war machine keeps turning. Death and hatred to mankind, Poisoning their brainwashed minds.

Oh Lord yeah.

Politicians hide themselves away, they only started the war. Why should they go out to fight? They leave that role for the poor, yeah Time will tell on their power minds, making war just for fun. Treating people just like pawns in chess, wait 'till their judgement day comes, yeah.

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 day of judgement, God is calling on their knees the war pigs crawling, Begging mercies for their sins Satan, laughing, spreads his wings.

Oh Lord yeah.

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Large: I never listened to the lyrics …never really cared to. For some reason I always thought two things about this song:

1) Ozzy sounds a LOT like Richard Simmons in this song …so much so I want to reach out to Rich to see if he’ll record a cover:

2) I kinda thought it was about pigs that were used in war. Maybe hogs with explosives strapped on their back trained to run into enemy foxholes?

First off, War Pigs was the opening track from Black Sabbath's 1970 album Paranoid which also contains another pretty recognizable hit with Iron Man.

The album was supposed to be titled War Pigs, but the label kiboshed that because we were in the middle of the Vietnam War at the time. It was well received critically and immediately labeled an anti-war song.

People thought it was about wealthy people (pigs) who profited off of other people fighting. But Ozzy once said the song had nothing to do with Vietnam. The original title of "War Pigs" was "Walpurgis", which is a term dealing with the witches' sabbath.

Walpurgis is sort of like Christmas for Satanists.

But when they brought it to the record company, they thought 'Walpurgis' sounded TOO Satanic. And that's when it turned it into 'War Pigs'.

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