The Genius of Bill Ward: Black Sabbath’s Beating Heart By Brian Wilson, a lifelong fan Black Sabbath never needed polish. They needed weight, danger, and a sound that could knock you flat and then stomp you into the floorboards. Behind all that doom and thunder was Bill Ward, a quiet English bloke from Aston who, without fanfare, changed the way rock drumming could feel. Ward doesn’t just keep time, he stretches it, bends it, makes it breathe. Spin up War Pigs and listen to the fills; they swing with a looseness that almost shouldn’t work, but somehow, miraculously, it does. His style is part jazz club, part jackhammer: a hint of Buddy Rich in one hand, the clanging machinery of Birmingham in the other. That’s the heartbeat that made Sabbath sound alive, almost drunkenly alive. What separates him from the endless line of metal drummers who came after? Taste. Ward never crowded the riffs, never marched like a metronome. He serves the music. Every Sabbath song felt like its own liv...