Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner… Black Sabbath? Classical-contemporary crossovers are a fascinating phenomenon and this is precisely what you’ll get from the Orchestra Of Doom – a 35-piece orchestra performing reimagined Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne classics at two very special shows in Sydney and Melbourne later this year.
The shows were conceived by Ugly Kid Joe frontman Whitfield Crane. The idea for Orchestra Of Doom came to Crane on his nomadic travels a few years back. It was in Verona, Italy that Crane realised he could make his dream of merging the two genres a reality. Things really started taking shape when Crane was introduced to the talented young composer Andrea Battistoni.
“He’s a genius,” says Crane. “A genius like Beethoven, but a Beethoven who loves Sabbath and Judas Priest. We hatched a scheme and it all manifested. The lynchpin was Andrea.”
The result of this budding relationship was a sold-out performance with Crane fronting the Machiavelli Orchestra in a show consisting of Sabbath classics, choice cuts from Ozzy Osbourne’s solo career and the prime movers from Crane’s own 30-year catalogue.
“It was the most terrifying and amazing experience of my musical career, for sure,” says Crane. “I’m not looking for the ego of ideas, but am looking for ideas themselves. I’m always spitting them out, I’m always being creative, always trying and doing. Most of the time shit doesn’t work, and that’s fine, but sometimes something like the idea of this, it has a life of its own and you become a conduit of it.”
Following the Orchestra’s initial performance, Crane recalls seeing some video footage of them performing Ozzy Osbourne’s classic, ‘Diary Of A Madman’.
“Sick and perfect for an orchestral landing,” Crane describes it. Armed with proof of his idea made real, Crane went to a Black Sabbath concert and presented the footage to Ozzy himself.
“We went to sound check, I cruise backstage and show it to Ozzy and it freaks him out. And it’s hard to freak that dude out. He sat there with that Ozzy stare, the one you’ve seen for years. He’s spacing out thinking about it – he looks at me and he goes, ‘Orchestra’s don’t jam.’ I go, ‘What?’ He looked at me again, all kinds of Ozzy-ish and he goes, ‘Orchestras don’t jam, man’.
“But the genius is we’re taking seven core members from Italy and coming to Australia – it’s an amalgam because an orchestra does have elements of jam. A foundation of classical music and Black Sabbath is a jam band, but once again it’s hard for me to put into words because it’s just becoming its own thing now.”
Crane is amazed by the extent of people the Orchestra Of Doom has touched – musicians, writers, creatives of any number. He’s excited by the potential the Orchestra has for reaching fans of traditional orchestral music and for metal heads.
“All the musicians I’ve ever crossed paths with, those people have given their lives to whatever instruments they play.”
For Crane, singing classic metal tracks at the head of an orchestra is a world away from his usual battle against Marshall stacks. But while having to perform against a swell of natural sound is unknown and terrifying territory for him, he welcomes the challenge.
“It’s also the most liberating [experience],” he says. “I’m good in the chaos and noise and light of being surround by stacks, but this is fascinating because there’s not any of those elements. You can hear the tangible and idiosyncratic differences in all the instruments and it’s scored in this amazing way that you don’t have to sing so violently. I’m inside a matrix that’s becoming – it’s not there yet, it’s forever moving forward.
“We’re going by the thematic structure as if it was an opera. We’re paying homage, and rightly so, as if this were an actual opera.”
Orchestra Of Doom featuring Ugly Kid Joe’s Whitfield Crane and Philharmonia Australia comes to the Palais Theatre on Tuesday December 3. Tickets through Ticketmaster.
