Mac Sabbath brings meaty metal to Bend

Published 12:00 am Friday, August 7, 2015

Mike Odd isn’t sure how much longer he can keep being Mac Sabbath’s manager.

It comes up halfway through a recent conversation with the Bulletin, and keeps coming up as Odd describes what he has to put up with in this Black Sabbath-meets-fast food tribute band: a lead singer who’s a demonic clown stuck in the 1970s; a ubiquitous fast-food chain that can’t be named for legal reasons; aliens and time travel and government conspiracies.

Odd, who is also lead singer for Los Angeles metal group Rosemary’s Billygoat, discovered Mac Sabbath in 2014. Or, rather, lead singer Ronald Osbourne discovered him.

“He found me; he discovered that (I play in a band) and decided I was the guy, and I kind of didn’t have a choice,” Odd said from his home in L.A. a few days before the start of Mac Sabbath’s tour, which heads to Volcanic Theatre Pub on Tuesday (the band plays the after-party show for Ziggy Marley).

He added, “Somehow I’m balancing the extreme stress and the extreme illogicalness of trying to make this all come together with my absolute love for the combination that came out of it, and try to figure out how many more days I’m gonna be doing this.”

The band’s members, who dress in colorful costumes resembling certain corporate mascots — guitarist Slayer McCheese, bassist GrimAlice, drummer Cat Burglar and Osbourne — keep their true identities secret. Odd has been rumored to be Osbourne — the resemblance is uncanny — but the two have been photographed and filmed in the same room together.

According to band legend, which Odd relayed, Osbourne arrived from the 1970s through “some kind of time-space continuum plane.” This explains the band’s fear of technology — it has no website, and there are no recordings of any of the band’s songs, all Black Sabbath covers with rewritten, food-themed lyrics.

With tongue planted firmly in cheek (or should we say hamburger?), Mac Sabbath sings of the virtues of “Sweet Beef” and “More Ribs” to metalheads and junk-food fans alike. As the band itself puts it, they’re the originators of “drive-thru metal.”

While “Frying Pan” and the aforementioned “More Ribs” immediately suggest their Sabbath-y counterparts (“Iron Man,” “War Pigs”), “Cherries Are Fruits,” which riffs on the controversy surrounding golden arches and cherry pies, is a bit more esoteric, until you say the words out loud.

Songs such as “Chicken For the Slaves” deliver diatribes on the evils of junk food: “Retribution on their minds, the chickens start to march; slaves drive thru in SUVs, and eat their deep fried starch.” While humorous, Odd insists the band is dead serious.

“It’s more than a warning, absolutely,” Odd said. “Ronald comes from a time that is very based in psychedelic imagery. I think back to Black Sabbath, and McDonald’s commercials, for that matter — at that time, they were both big into the psychedelic imagery. I’m not sure where the link is exactly, but there’s extreme warnings going on. It’s not just subtext.”

Then there’s the band’s show itself, which combines Sabbath’s snarling riffs with primary-colored stage props, psychedelic video screens, bat burgers, ketchup and mustard squirters and a full-size grill.

“I don’t know any other bands that have grilled onstage,” Odd said. “Whether (people) come hungry or not, when they leave, they will be satisfied.”

— Brian McElhiney