Ozzy Osbourne

John Michael "Ozzy" Osbourne (born 3 December 1948) is an English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter, whose musical career has spanned over 40 years. Osbourne rose to prominence as lead singer of the pioneering English band Black Sabbath, whose dark and hard sound helped spawn the heavy metal genre. Due to Sabbath's dark style, Osbourne became known as the "Prince of Darkness". Osbourne is also known as the "Godfather of Heavy Metal".

No band affected the metal world more so than Pantera during the early to mid-'90s. Beginning with its 1990 album Cowboys From Hell, the post-thrash band put to rest any and all remnants of the '80s metal scene, almost single-handedly demolishing any notion that hair metal, speed metal, power metal, et al., were anything but passé. Sure, a lot of critics point toward Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and the subsequent alternative rock explosion as the death knell of '80s-style metal, but you could just as easily point toward Pantera. In fact, most metalheads do exactly that.