A few months ago I visited Birmingham and was surprised by the number of people boasting about being the city where heavy metal was born. And they kept recommending that I take a picture on a bench located in a canal area, where a few years earlier the City Council had held a tribute to the band Black Sabbath. It was full of people of all ages taking pictures. I did it too, amazed at how the city, with a reputation for being gray and tough, was reclaiming that group of fat young men who scandalized everyone in the late 60s and early 70s. Little did I imagine then that a few months later the band's singer, Ozzy Osbourne would die just a few weeks after giving his last concert at Villa Park, Aston Villa's home.

[In this article, we also call heavy metal metal, with an open accent, as recommended by Termcat, but we keep metal, without an accent, in stylistic denominations, such as black metal, death metal and thrash metal]