Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats pays tribute to To Ozzy Osbourne with their cover of »Believer«

Photo credit: Karin Hunt

Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats have released a rendition of the classic Ozzy Osbourne track »Believer« on July 22nd, 2026. The release marks the one-year anniversary of Ozzy’s death, who passed away on July 22nd, 2025.

»Believer« was originally released on Ozzy Osbourne’s landmark second studio album, »Diary Of A Madman« (1981).

Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats have recently announced their new full-length album, »Shapes Of Midnight«, which will be released on September 18th, 2026 via Killer Candy Records.

Two years on from the mesmeric »Nell’ Ora Blu«, their synth-laden soundtrack for an imaginary Giallo movie, orphic Cambridge heavies Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats return with their seventh full-length »Shapes Of Midnight«. A brilliantly macabre concept album partly inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s »The Masque Of The Red Death« and the too-real nightmares of our modern age, »Shapes Of Midnight« refines the group’s ‘Evil Beatles’ sound: a thrilling, expertly composed fusion of eerie harmonies, pop hooks, Thin Lizzy-esque twin-guitar brilliance and the kind of fleet-footed heaviness that’s become their trademark.

»Shapes Of Midnight« was tracked at Abbey Road Studios – live to analogue tape, natch – in a blessed three-day blitz in the company of storied engineer Chris Bolster, whose previous clients include Phil Spector, Ozzy Osbourne and Paul McCartney. The band employed era-appropriate tech, from antique Neumann mics once breathed upon by the Fabs and the Floyd, to consoles and compressors from the peak era of recorded sound. The mastering, meanwhile, was completed by Grammy-nominated engineer Noel Summerville (The White Stripes, The Clash, My Bloody Valentine).

The album marks a return to the guitar-forward attack of their earlier records, but also an evolution. Their blessed invocation of proto-metal heaviness is gilded by blasts of uncanny melancholic pop, bruising NWOBHM gallop, jazzy textures and complexities, and Krautrock-y cro-magnon synth damage. It’s a deliciously dark listen, for sure; as songwriter Kevin Starrs says, “our albums exist in an alternate universe to our own. They’re all stories that could happen here, but everything’s just a bit ‘off’.”

Bojan Bidovc // music enthusiast, promoter, misanthrop and sometimes a journalist as well