With Black Sabbath in their final year of touring and The Ozzfest/Knotfest tour being one of the major metal concert events of the year, it’s safe to say that Ozzy Osbourne is having a pretty big year. Even without the cheating scandal that perhaps too neatly coincided with the announcement of the festival, he’s been in the spotlight this year. So perhaps it’s bad timing that earlier today, his Instagram account, which has over one million followers, has been hacked. At about 6pm EST, Metal Insider reader Zenametal tipped us off that his account had been hacked.
As of press time, 23 pictures, some of which appear to show the same people, have been uploaded in a little over two hours. The name on the account has been changed to “villosbourne,” and many of the comments are from annoyed fans. While whoever oversees Ozzy’s social media will probably scrub it shortly, this is just the latest and most high-profile instance of a band’s social media being hacked. Mastodon’s Twitter account has been hacked, and so has Avenged Sevenfold’s. Metalcore band I See Stars even had their account hacked by someone claiming to be ISIS, so in the grand scheme of things, Ozzy might have gotten off easy. Here are the nonsensical images that have been uploaded so far. If there’s an official statement from Ozzy’s camp, we’ll update you.
