Zakk Wylde is bringing two bands and four decades of heavy metal history to San Antonio when his Black Label Society and Zakk Sabbath double bill hits the Boeing Center at Tech Port on Sept. 4. The 59-year-old guitarist, who spent three tours of duty playing guitar for Ozzy Osbourne, says he's still processing the loss of the man who gave him his start, and the show arrives as a working tribute to that relationship as much as a tour stop.
Wylde was barely 20 years old when he won the audition to replace Jake E. Lee in Osbourne's band, a job that made his recording debut on the September 1988 album No Rest for the Wicked, which reached No. 13 on the Billboard 200 and went double platinum. As reported by San Antonio Current, that relationship ran deep enough that Osbourne became godfather to Wylde's oldest son, and Wylde has described the bond as one built over three separate stints in the singer's touring band. Lee, the guitarist Wylde replaced in 1987, later survived being shot multiple times in Las Vegas in October 2024 while walking his dog, according to the Associated Press, a story Hoodline covered in its own report on Lee's recovery.
Wylde was among the musicians who joined Osbourne's final live performance, the Back to the Beginning benefit concert at Villa Park in Birmingham, England, on July 5, 2025. Osbourne, suffering from advanced Parkinson's disease, performed 13 songs seated on a throne, per the San Antonio Current's account of Wylde's recollections. Osbourne died 17 days later, on July 22, 2025, from cardiac arrest and coronary artery disease, a sequence of events detailed by Martin Cid Magazine.
A Farewell Show That Doubled as a Family Trip
Wylde performed in Osbourne's solo set during that historic final show and also played with Pantera at the same concert, according to the San Antonio Current's report. He brought his wife, Barbaranne, and his children to witness the performance, and he was in the crowd for Black Sabbath's own headlining set that night — the band's final live performance as well, per the article. The bill that day also featured Anthrax, Mastodon, Metallica, Guns N' Roses, Tool and Slayer, the outlet reported. Wylde later posted a tribute to Osbourne on Instagram following his death.
Wylde's connection to Black Sabbath's catalog goes back to childhood. He has said he discovered the band's 1976 album We Sold Our Soul for Rock 'n' Roll at age 11, and used money from childhood jobs to buy guitars and amplifiers so he could study Sabbath and Osbourne's catalogs alongside those of Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin, per the outlet's account of his upbringing. He has also described attending a Ronnie James Dio-led performance of Black Sabbath at Philadelphia's Spectrum, after Dio replaced Osbourne as the band's vocalist. By his own account, he practiced guitar 10 hours a day as a teenager building toward that eventual audition.
Two Bands, One Night, in a High-Tech Arena
The double bill puts Zakk Sabbath, the power trio Wylde formed in 2014 dedicated to covering Black Sabbath, in the opening slot ahead of Black Label Society, the band Wylde fronts. Zakk Sabbath rounds out its lineup with Rob “Blasko” Nicholson on bass and Joey Castillo on drums, and the project reportedly began when Wylde and Nicholson were asked to join a metal all-star touring concept, according to the San Antonio Current. The trio has stayed dedicated to the source material in the studio too, releasing the double album Doomed Forever Forever Doomed in March 2024 via Magnetic Eye Records, containing full re-recordings of Black Sabbath's 1970 album Paranoid and 1971 album Master of Reality, per Napalm Records.
Tickets for the San Antonio show range from $114.48 to $158.60, according to the San Antonio Current. The venue itself, the Boeing Center at Tech Port, is a $70 million, 130,000-square-foot facility that opened in May 2022 on the former Kelly Air Force Base, according to the Boeing Center at Tech Port. Its 3,100-capacity arena is equipped with a 60-by-20-foot LED wall and built-in musical Tesla coils, features Hoodline detailed in its recent coverage of the venue's Labor Day funk showcase. The arena sits within Port San Antonio, the broader tech and industrial campus that announced plans in March 2024 for a $300 million, 11-story office tower focused on defense, aerospace and cybersecurity, according to the San Antonio Express-News.
A Career Spanning Metal's Biggest Stages
Beyond Black Label Society and Zakk Sabbath, Wylde has kept busy across metal's biggest reunion tours. He's currently Pantera's touring guitarist, filling the role once held by his late friend Dimebag Darrell alongside Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante, a gig he took on with surviving members Phil Anselmo and Rex Brown in July 2022, according to Guitar World. He's also performed on the Experience Hendrix tour and participated in Steve Vai's Generation Axe, and the San Antonio Current notes his long-standing musical relationship with bassist J.D. DeServio. Wylde has said his childhood love of Elton John sits alongside his metal roots, and following Osbourne's temporary retirement in the early 1990s, he first stepped out as a lead vocalist with the Southern rock trio Pride & Glory, releasing a self-titled album in June 1994 on Geffen Records, according to AllMusic.
Black Label Society's current run also carries it beyond San Antonio, with a stop scheduled for Sunday, Sept. 6, at the 20th anniversary Rocklahoma festival in Pryor, Oklahoma, sharing the bill that day with Slayer, The Pretty Reckless and Suicidal Tendencies, according to Hoodline's earlier report on Rocklahoma's 20th anniversary lineup. For San Antonio, Wylde has said he was focused on making the performance sound right rather than dwelling on the scale of the show or the history riding along with it — a mindset that carries the weight of a man still playing songs written by, and for, a friend who is no longer here to hear them.
