When "Mafia," the latest album from Zakk Wylde's Black Label Society, debuted in Billboard's top 20 earlier this month, it signified more than a career chart high for the guitarist and singer.
With no media hype, modest airplay and a video relegated to fringe time slots, the success of "Mafia" proved that there's an audience out there hungry for gritty, guitar-based, groove-filled metal, served up old-school style with plenty of solos.
Wylde, who brings Black Label Society to The Rave tonight, sees the accomplishment as part of a movement that includes brethren such as Velvet Revolver, Audioslave and other bands determined to muscle aside the sensitive rockers, American Idols and oiled-ab rappers who have dominated music and pop culture in recent years.
And yes, Wylde happily admits that Black Label Society's success is some sweet revenge.
"When I was looking for a label, I kept hearing, Dude, this music's done. It's finished. You should get more like Limp Bizkit. This whole Hell's Angel-biker-berserker-Viking thing you got going isn't doing anything for you,' " Wylde recalled in a phone interview.
"Now Black Label Society is at No. 15. Where the hell is Limp Bizkit?" the guitarist added with a chuckle.
His big break: Ozzy
Wylde, 37, got his start in the mid-'80s playing in Springsteen country the rock-loving clubs and bars of the Jersey shore. The guitarist's big break came in 1987, when he was tapped by Ozzy Osbourne to provide ax support for the metal master, a gig Wylde has had on and off ever since.
"Everyone was saying, He's damaged goods, he's done,' " Wylde said of the reaction he received from music industry executives, who felt his close affiliation with Osbourne made him hopelessly out of date.
"I felt I should be proud of the fact that I was part of the lineage of Randy Rhoads and Jake E. Lee," said Wylde, referring to Osbourne's previous, iconic guitarists.
Over time, Wylde ascended to guitar god status as well, with his own "signature" line of customized Les Paul guitars, Marshall amps and even effects pedals. Fans posting giddy online reviews of "Mafia" credit him with bringing back the guitar solo, a largely lost art among the nu-metal crowd.
But Wylde is quick to distance himself from the six-string egomaniacs who noodle away endlessly onstage while fans check their watches.
"For me, the guitar solos are the icing on the cake. But you've got to have the cake to put icing on, you know? You have to have the song," said Wylde, who learned a good deal about hooks and melody from Osbourne.
"Ozzy was my education. That was where I learned. That was my alma mater and I'm (expletive) proud of it," Wylde said.
Ozzfest, the long-running summer metal package tour headlined by Wylde's mentor, gave the guitarist a chance to show off his master's degree in headbanging. Performing sometimes with Osbourne, sometimes with Black Label Society and, on occasion, pulling double duty, Wylde refined his personal style and sound. The look was biker gear, the music was big, boozy, blues-based and swaggering metal, and the talk was, well, mostly unprintable in a family newspaper.
Friend and fellow Ozzfest alum Rob Zombie captured Wylde's persona onstage and off best when he described the guitarist as "a Viking who fell off his longboat drunk and wondered, Where the hell am I?' "
Mellowness and mayhem
Chatting with Wylde by phone does have a quality of good-natured mayhem to it, as the guitarist's boisterous ramble swings without warning from his current set list which he described as "supple yet sassy" to his plans to make a "Mel Brooks, Monty Python-esque" spoof of the cult gang war classic, "The Warriors," starring all of his metal friends.
"Someone said, You do understand none of your friends have any acting ability,' " Wylde said, interrupting himself with laughter.
"It's going to be the worst movie ever," he added with delight.
Wylde has his mellower side as well, showcased on the 2004 Black Label album "Hangover Music" and on the "Mafia" track "In This River." The ballad, featuring Wylde on piano, is dedicated to his friend and fellow guitar great, the late Darrell "Dimebag" Abbott, who was shot and killed in December while performing onstage.
Wylde's voice loses its rowdier edge when he talks about Abbott for a minute.
"I got pictures of him on my nightstand, all around my house. . . . I have his phone number. I call him every day," said Wylde.
Then he chuckles again, remembering Abbott's legendary fondness for both practical jokes and Crown Royal whisky.
A round in God's tavern'
"Now, whenever something goes wrong on the road, we just look at each other and say, This has to be a joke Dime's playing on us now from where he's sitting, up in God's tavern with Randy (Rhoads) and Jimi (Hendrix) and Bon Scott and everyone else,' " Wylde said.
He added merrily, "Man, there ain't going to be any Crown left up there.
