War Pigs
An anti-war song first called Walpurgis, with an air-raid siren added in the studio.
Black Sabbath, from Paranoid (1970)
- Written by
- Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, Bill Ward, Ozzy Osbourne
- Released
- 1970
- Length
- 7:57
- Album
- Paranoid
Butler wrote the lyrics, and Rodger Bain produced. Bain and Tom Allom added the air-raid siren and sped up the ending. The song was originally called Walpurgis, which Butler compared to Christmas for Satanists, and the label thought it sounded too Satanic. Butler has said he was totally against the Vietnam War, though Osbourne said the band knew nothing about Vietnam and it was just an anti-war song. Butler told Mojo in 2017 that politicians are the real Satanists, and he credited Bob Dylan's With God on Our Side as an influence. Iommi's memoir says the idea came from war stories heard at a US Air Force base on a European tour, and that it was written in Zurich.
An early version was played on BBC Radio 1 on 26 April 1970 and appears on The Ozzman Cometh, and Walpurgis was released in 1997.
Live and covers
It opened the Villa Park set on 5 July 2025. Judas Priest have used it as walk-on music since late 2011 and covered it in July 2025.
Covers and versions
- Faith No More (1989)
- Ozzy Osbourne with Faith No More and James Hetfield (1990) At the Hollywood Palladium.
- T-Pain (2023)
- uKanDanZ (2025) In Amharic.
- Post Malone with Slash, Duff McKagan, Chad Smith and Andrew Watt (2026) At the Grammys.
More songs by Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath, Paranoid, Iron Man, Snowblind, N.I.B., Sweet Leaf, Children of the Grave, Planet Caravan, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
Sources
- War Pigs, Wikipedia
- War Pigs by Black Sabbath, Songfacts
- Paranoid (album), Wikipedia