Trivium frontman Matt Heafy has revealed the band were asked to egg Iron Maiden in 2005.

The singer/guitarist makes the admission in an exclusive interview with Metal Hammer, while reflecting on the metalcore band’s time opening Ozzfest that year for Maiden and Black Sabbath.

The tour took place amid a feud between Sabbath manager/Ozzfest organiser Sharon Osbourne and Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson. It reportedly stemmed from Dickinson making disparaging comments about reality TV, which Osbourne, co-star of MTV reality series The Osbournes, took exception to. The spat peaked during the tour’s stop in Los Angeles, when a posse led by Osbourne egged Maiden as the band endured power outages.

Heafy starts by saying that Trivium had to pay $30,000 to join the Ozzfest bill, which included the costs of renting a bus and crew for the jaunt. He continues: “Some days we were opening at 9 in the morning, but I remember on the last Iron Maiden day the tour was going to continue but we were asked by some of the Ozzfest crew, ‘Hey do you want to egg Iron Maiden?’ It was like, ‘Why the hell would we do that?’”

Trivium didn’t just decline to egg Maiden – they then doubled down on their support for the UK heavy metal icons by wearing their t-shirts onstage and covering The Trooper during their sets. They were treated fiercely by Ozzfest’s crew as a result.

“We got bullied by the Ozzfest crew; they’d drive their golf carts right up to our faces, shoot dirt at us,” Heafy remembers. “Paolo [Gregoletto, bass] almost got arrested at one of the shows. It was a strange time; we paid $30,000 to get bullied like we were in high school!”

The bad blood towards Trivium seemingly extended for years, to the point that the band were only “recently” given a very conditional offer to return to the travelling festival. “We were actually told recently if we apologised we’d be allowed to do the tour again someday,” says Heafy.

Ozzfest has been on ice since 2018, but Osbourne suggested in January it could return. In July, she reflected on pelting Maiden with eggs in 2005. “I had been having cancer treatments [Osbourne had surgery for colon cancer in 2002], and all the nurses that I had met over my year in chemo came to the show and they said, ‘Can we do anything for you?’ And I’m like, ‘Yes, you can,’” she remembered.

“I loaded them up with cans of bean soup, vegetables, eggs, and I said, ‘Pelt the singer.’ And that’s what they did.”

Osbourne still seems to harbour ill will towards Dickinson, as she described him as being “eaten up with jealousy” for her husband, Sabbath singer Ozzy Osbourne.

Trivium will co-headline The Poisoned Ascendancy world tour with Bullet For My Valentine in 2025. The two bands will be playing their respective 2005 albums, Ascendancy and The Poison, in full to mark their 20th anniversaries. The European and North American legs have been announced, dates of which are below.

Trivium / Bullet For My Valentine 2025 tour dates:

Jan 26: Cardiff Utilita Arena, UK
Jan 27: Cardiff Utilita Arena, UK
Jan 28: Glasgow OVO Hydro, UK
Jan 30: Manchester Co-op Live, UK
Jan 31: Birmingham Utilita Arena, UK
Feb 01: London The O2, UK

Feb 02: Düsseldorf Mitsubishi Electric Hall, Germany
Feb 04: Stuttgart Scheleyer-Hall, Germany
Feb 05: Zurich The Hall, Switzerland
Feb 07: Paris Le Zenith, France
Feb 09: Antwerp Lotto Arena, Belgium
Feb 10: Hannover Swiss Life Hall, Germany
Feb 11: Amsterdam AFAS Live, Netherlands
Feb 13: Hamburg Sporthalle, Germany
Feb 14: Berlin Max-Schmeling-Halle, Germany
Feb 15: Frankfurt Jahrhunderthalle, Germany
Feb 17: Milan Alcatraz, Italy
Feb 18: Munich Zenith, Germany
Feb 19: Vienna Stadthalle, Austria
Feb 21: Gliwice Arena, Poland
Feb 22: Prague Forum Karlin, Czechia
Feb 23: Luxembourg Rockhal, Luxembourg
Feb 26: Lisbon Campo Pequeno, Portugal
Feb 27: Madrid Vistalegre, Spain

Mar 30: Vancouver PNE Forum, Canada
Apr 01: Seattle Paramount Theatre, WA
Apr 03: San Francisco The Masonic, CA
Apr 04: Wheatland Hard Rock Live, CA
Apr 05: Reno Grand Sierra Resort Grand Theatre, NV
Apr 08: Denver Fillmore Auditorium, CO
Apr 10: Las Vegas The Pearl Concert Theater, NV
Apr 11: Inglewood YouTube Theater, CA
Apr 12: Phoenix Arizona Financial Theatre, AZ
Apr 15: Dallas Gilley’s South Side Ballroom, TX
Apr 16: San Antonio Boeing Center At Tech Port, TX
Apr 17: Houston Bayou Music Center, TX
Apr 19: Chesterfield The Factory, MO
Apr 20: Omaha Steelhouse Omaha, NE
Apr 22: Green Bay Epic Event Center, WI
Apr 23: Grand Rapids GLC Live at 20 Monroe, MI
Apr 26: Chicago Byline Bank Aragon Ballroom, IL
Apr 27: Detroit The Fillmore Detroit, MI
Apr 29: Pittsburgh Stage AE Outdoors, PA
Apr 30: Philadelphia The Fillmore Philadelphia, PA
May 02: Boston MGM Music Hall at Fenway, MA
May 03: Laval Place Bell, Canada
May 04: Toronto Great Canadian Resort, Canada
May 06: Washington DC The Anthem
May 07: New York The Rooftop at Pier 17, NY
May 09: Bethlehem Wind Creek Event Center, PA
May 11: Nashville The Pinnacle, TN
May 13: Corbin The Corbin Arena, KY
May 14: Atlanta Coca-Cola Roxy, GA
May 17: Charlotte Skyla Credit Union Amphitheatre, NC
May 18: Raleigh Red Hat Amphitheater, NC

Sharon Osbourne has revealed that she would absolutely be open to resurrecting the legendary touring Ozzfest festival at some point in the future, but has added that there are some caveats to take into account. Speaking on the latest episode of the revived Osbournes Podcast, Sharon is asked by her daughter Kelly whether she would consider organising another Ozzfest event, to which Sharon replies (as transcribed by Blabbermouth):  "Yeah, sure. Of course."

Sharon goes on to say that it's "great" that Ozzfest has inspired many other bands and event organisers to put on their own festivals over the years, but suggests that part of the reason Ozzfest is now more difficult to put on is that many artists ask for too much money to play.

"Why is it when it comes to us that everybody thinks that we are trillionaires, and so that every manager who wants their band on our festival wants one of the fucking trillions they think we've got to put on the festival?" Sharon laments. 

Pondering the possibility of having an Ozzfest-style event dedicated to younger, upcoming bands, Sharon adds: "You can do it for a baby stage, but you still need the headliners. It's always great to have the baby stage, I mean, that's what it's all about - breaking new bands. That's why we did it.

"It's very hard for acts who are not known to suddenly go and be in front of 50,000 people on a main stage at a festival and understand what they're meant to do," she continues. "It's very intimidating. You could have maybe five thousand people at that baby stage, and then to go from five to fifty to sixty thousand people, and it's really, really hard for baby bands. They've pay their dues anyway. That's what it's all about."

The first Ozzfest was held over two days in October 1996 in Phoenix, Arizona and Devore, California, and featured sets from the likes of Ozzy Osbourne, Slayer, Danzig, Biohazard, Sepultura, Fear Factory and more. The following year, it expanding into the touring format which it would maintain for years after, eventually expanding to events in Europe and Japan.

The most recent event took place on a single date on New Years Eve in 2018, taking over The Forum in Inglewood, California and featuring appearances from Ozzy, Rob Zombie, Zakk Sabbath, Jonathan Davis and more.

Classic-era Slipknot have now become a legendary beast in the annals of heavy metal. With The Nine now nearing their 30th anniversary, they have countless fans who never got to see them during their turn-of-the-millennium ascent.

However, the footage below (uploaded by YouTuber Frost Media Productions) remains a document of how lethal Slipknot were when they emerged. Filmed at a stop on the 2001 Ozzfest tour one month before Iowa came out, it shows an incensed nonet giving it both barrels, their sheer force pushing everyone present to jump on multiple occasions.

The setlist is the kind that countless fans would kill for nowadays. Although all golden-age bangers, the songs include Eyeless, People = Shit, Wait And Bleed, (Sic), Spit It Out and a primitive incarnation of The Heretic Anthem entitled Heretic Song. Hearing Corey Taylor introduce now-mainstay Disasterpiece as a “new song” is jarring, to say the least, but it was just as refined yet ferocious in one of its earliest airings as it is today. The full setlist is available below.

23 years on, Slipknot will revisit their earliest material with a setlist not dissimilar to the one they played at Ozzfest 2001. The nu metal hellraisers will tour the UK and Europe next year to commemorate the 25th anniversary of their debut album, and percussionist Shawn “Clown” Crahan confirmed in a Kerrang! interview that Slipknot will be played in full.

The musician asked journalist Mischa Pearlman: “You’re talking about the anniversary of one of the greatest metal albums to ever release in the thought process known as reality, and you think this 54-year-old man who just told you ‘I’m going out the way I came in’, you think for one moment that this album isn’t going to be played in its entirety in front of, like, a hundred people, 200 people, 300 people, 50,000 people?”

Slipknot setlist – Ozzfest, Seattle WA: June 25, 2001

People = Shit
Liberate
Eeyore
Disasterpiece
Purity
Eyeless
New Abortion
The Heretic Anthem
Spit It Out
Wait And Bleed

Encore:
(Sic)
Surfacing

Sharon Osbourne has revealed that the reason we can't have Ozzfest any more is because the festival is no longer cost-effective to stage... due to the greed of her fellow managers. 

The hugely successful metal festival, headlined by either Black Sabbath or Ozzy Osbourne himself, is the topic of conversation on the latest Osbourne family podcast. And when the topic is introduced by Jack Osbourne, his father immediately asks, "Are we ever going to do another Ozzfest?"

"That is a great question," Jack replies, then adds, "That is more of a question for you good sir."

Created after Lollapalooza festival laughed off the idea of Osbourne headlining their event, the first Ozzfest was staged in October 1996, as a two-day festival held in Phoenix, Arizona, and Devore, California, with Ozzy joined by Slayer, Danzig, Biohazard, Sepultura, Fear Factory and more. From this modest beginning, the festival became a proper touring event in America, with the UK getting its own Ozzfest event in 1998, with a bill featuring both Ozzy and Sabbath. The last Ozzfest was staged on just one day, New Year's Eve 2018, at The Forum in Los Angeles, with Rob Zombie and Marilyn Manson among the supporting cast. This show was also Ozzy Osbourne's last full performance.

On the new podcast episode, Ozzy mentions that greed played a role in the event going on hiatus.

"Yeah, it was a very weird beast," Sharon Osbourne says, "because all the bands were our mates, but the managers were greedy, and for some reason they thought that we were making billions on it and we weren’t.

"We made a profit. But it was not like – we couldn’t retire on it. And managers and agents wanted more and more and more, and it just wasn’t cost-effective anymore. We stopped because it just wasn’t cost-effective."

Ozzy then says that his wife and manager's workload organising the event was "fucking insane."

As an example of the hassles that could arise, Sharon Osbourne explains, "Years and years ago, one of the bands – it was the second Ozzfest we did, or the third – wouldn’t go on stage until I agreed to give them 10,000 more dollars. And they were holding everything up, and I said, Of course, of course I’ll give it you."

The band is then revealed to have been Danzig, and Mrs O reveals that she never paid them the extra money, and simply responded, "Fuck you."

As to whether Ozzfest will reappear, no-one in the family wanted to commit to a definitive answer, although Ozzy does propose the idea that the festival could continue without him.

Watch the episode in full below:

Ozzfest was great, wasn't it? Sharon Osbourne's decision to create her own festival after Lollapalooza's refusal to book her husband Ozzy back in 1996 ended up giving metal fans years of incredible line-ups, especially in the US.

The UK, meanwhile, finally got its own first iteration of Ozzfest at the Milton Keynes Bowl on one unforgettable afternoon in 1998, featuring an insane bill including Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne, plus Foo Fighters, Korn, Pantera, Soulfly and many more. So, when the summer of 1999 rolled around, British metalheads were chomping at the bit for another Ozzfest to arrive. Sadly, we never got that immediate follow-up. Instead, red tape, a stuffy Conservative councillor and the incarceration of a grunge icon destroyed what could have been one of the best festival line-ups the UK had ever seen.

Fans rejoiced in May 1999 when news came through that Ozzfest would be coming back for an entire weekend that August at London’s Earls Court. Billed as ‘The Last Supper’, it was promoted as Black Sabbath’s last ever shows with the original line up of Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward. 

“Last year’s Ozzfest at Milton Keynes was so fucking great,” said Ozzy in a press release. “It was a special day that will remain with me forever. That’s why I think it’s right that we’re ending the whole Sabbath thing in England.”

If that wasn’t enough, the bill was rounded out with a mouthwatering main stage lineup of Machine Head, Type O Negative, Coal Chamber and System Of A Down and a second stage including Cradle of Filth, Backyard Babies, Static-X, Apartment 26, Godsmack and Breed 77. What a bill, right? Surely no one could complain about that.

Step forward Conservative councillor for the boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea, Barry Phelps, who decided to attempt to have the event's license revoked mere weeks after its announcement. Phelps wrote a missive to the Board Of Local Hearings where he bizarrely described “Ozzie” (sic) as “A drug addict, or former drug addict, who used to bite the heads off live chickens onstage,” before referring to the Ozzfest-going crowd as “vulgar, ill-educated, loud-mouthed, selfish oafs with no consideration for anyone but themselves.”

It led to a war of attrition between metalheads and the local inhabitants of Earls Court, many of whom sided with the councillor and protested at the festival taking place. Coal Chamber bassist Rayna Ross called Phelps “terrible”, adding: “Doesn’t he realise it’s important for these kids to have an outlet?”. Phelps, meanwhile, doubled down on his opinion, telling The Evening Standard that “the prospect of thousands of ageing, tattooed and obnoxious rockers descending on Earls Court is too awful to contemplate.”

Soon, it was becoming clear that obstacles were being placed in front of Ozzfest to make the organisation of the event increasingly difficult; the festival was unable to obtain a license to start at 11am, making getting a decent slot for all the bands to play a logistical nightmare.

In the second week of July, two months after the festival was announced, it was confirmed that Ozzfest ‘99 was officially off; initially, it was announced as just a postponement, stating that the staggering success of Black Sabbath’s US shows meant that SFX Entertainment decided to take up their option to extend the tour until August. A week later, however, it was announced that there would be no replacement date. 

It turned out there had been other logistical issues plaguing the festival: Sharon Osbourne released a statement blaming “An unfortunate chain of events” which began when planned special guests Stone Temple Pilots had to pull out before even being announced, due to troubled vocalist Scott Weiland being sentenced to a year in prison after violating the terms of his parole for a previous charge of possession (he served five months). “We lost our second headliner and unfortunately no suitable replacement ever materialised," Sharon told Kerrang!. 

With political interference and angry locals trying to disrupt the event, the continuation of Sabbath's US tour, an unfillable gap in the line-up and an inability to find a suitable replacement venue, Sharon admitted that “It’s just not working. We certainly don’t want to do a half-hearted attempt. We would prefer to come back bigger and better next year. We are planning UK Ozzfest 2000 now, and we should be announcing a date very shortly.”

It robbed us of what could have been one of the greatest days of live heavy music in UK history, but it wasn’t all bad news: Sabbath played their 'Last Supper' that December over two spectacular evenings at Birmingham’s NEC, and, as it turns out, it wasn’t the last we saw of them at all. Though we did have to wait two more years, the original line-up was back at the Milton Keynes Bowl as Ozzfest UK came back bigger and better in 2001, with Slipknot, Tool, Papa Roach, Disturbed, Mudvayne and more. Good things, it seems, come to those who wait.

The best way to describe the first few years of Slipknot as a live band would be intense. A nine-headed beast brimming with bile-drenched drive, taking the stage wherever would have them and causing complete and utter devastation. And it's in performances like the one they put on at on the first date of Ozzfest 1999 that helped them on their path to the level of superstardom that are at now.

To set the scene, Ozzfest was hitting the road across America for the fourth time. The main stage boasted Black Sabbath, Rob Zombie, Pantera, Deftones, Slayer and System of A Down, to name a few. Yet it was on the second stage that the talk of the town would be. Sandwiched between Puya and Pushmonkey, and with Fear Factory, Static X and Hed PE set to follow them, Slipknot were placed slap bang in the middle of the bill. The first stop of the tour was in Coral Sky Amphitheater in West Palm Beach, Florida, on May 27, just over a month before the band were scheduled to release their debut, and now stone-cold classic, self-titled album. Though their name had been uttered as ones to watch, nobody could have been prepared for what was about to take place.

To watch footage from that set is to see a band at their most vicious and volatile. Dressed in their darkest boiler suits and with their terrifyingly affecting masks strapped tight to their faces, the way they take to stage to the sound of 742617000027 before bursting into (Sic) is utterly palpable. Gritty, devastating, and so outrageously fucking heavy, it would be impossible not to get goosebumps standing in front of such a display. From the terrifyingly gruelling Eyeless to the effortlessly catchy Wait And Bleed through to sheer contempt of Surfacing, it was a display that took the band to the next level instantly. And this was just day one.

Speaking to Rolling Stone in 2016 about what it meant to be a part of such a tour, Corey Taylor said: "Ozzfest gave us an incredible opportunity where we were really able to jumpstart a career from there. In a lot of ways, we had a lot of advantage over a lot of other bands because of that. We were able to get all over the country, we had people who really supported us from Day One that helped us get to where we are now. The great thing about being a part of that Ozzfest was that you were immediately part of the family. The Osbournes themselves really believed in this band.”

And after making such an impact, Corey recently spoke to Loudwire about what it was like to meet Ozzy himself for the very first time on the tour too, saying: “I was sitting at a table with Sharon and Jack [Osbourne] and a couple of other guys from Slipknot. And out of nowhere comes Ozzy. Sharon introduces us, and he’s like, ‘Oh, you’re in Slipknot, there’s nine guys, right? I want to be number ten’. It was like being baptised and knighted all at the same time”.

By the time the tour was over at the end of July, Slipknot was out, and the rest, they say, is history. A true monster was born.

Clown is not a man to do things by halves, whether it’s risking his life on stage for Slipknot or masterminding the Iowan nine-piece’s disturbing visuals.

In the run up to the release of Officer Downe – his directorial debut featuring Sons Of Anarchy star Kim Coates in the titular role – we had a poke around the fearless Slipknot percussionist’s head to discover exactly what makes Clown, Clown…

ON STARING DEATH IN THE FACE

“There were a couple of times I came close to death. There were times my wife would grab my face and say, ‘You’re pushing it too far’. She was saying, ‘If you die, you’re just going to be some guy in a book somewhere’. There was a lot of me that was turned on by that but I made it out. There was one time on Ozzfest that I jumped into a garbage can. I used to do that before we were signed – I’d jump in headfirst, lie on the floor and spazz out because people didn’t know how to handle it. I’d be kicking them in the legs and they’d try to kick me back but I was protected by the bin. I went headfirst into this barrel on Ozzfest and I didn’t realise it was half full of water. I got stuck in that thing for about 35 seconds and I remember thinking, ‘You’ve done it, you fucking went somewhere you shouldn’t have gone and now it’s going to get you.’ Then I got pushed over, came out of the bin and I was spitting out water. It was pretty serious dude. From that day on I realised that, if I was going to go into that zone, I had to at least pick my battles. At first, though, I didn’t care about the harm I was doing myself, in fact personal harm was invited. It felt good; it was like blood letting.”

• The 10 best Slipknot songs that are definitely NSFW
• Corey Taylor: Clown’s not changing his name
• The 10 best Slipknot songs with no bloody swearing
• "Welcome to a dream come true!" – The story of Slipknot so far

ON THE MAKING OF OFFICER DOWNE

“I’ve been working for my band for about 20 years now, and I’ve been allowed to do other things than just make music – behind the scenes short films, videos, album covers, art direction… you name it, I’ve done it. It’s all been working towards what I really want to do, to give myself something artistically challenging. Officer Downe is the hardest artistic work I’ve ever done in my life, because when you’re the director, you’re the boss. I went all out. I had a lot of rules: ‘Look, if Officer Downe shoots, people fucking die, that’s it – there’s no bullshit, no ‘I got away’. It’s very violent, very dark, very over the top. But it’s a comic book, so it’s very fun.”

ON HIS MASK

“When the band had just started, I was in the mall with a girlfriend and we walked into a Halloween store. There was a clown mask there in the sale. When I saw it, I thought, ‘Holy shit!’ It called out to me and, when I put it on, I remember my body movement was different. I became another thing. It was $39 or $49 and I had $50 in my pocket. I was supposed to be buying my girlfriend lunch and she got all pissed off because I’d spent all my money on this mask. She’s gone now but I still have him downstairs.”

ON DOING THINGS FOR YOURSELF

“This might seem a little egotistical but I was taught from a very young age that, if you want something done right, then you need to do it yourself. No one in Des Moines was going to get me or my band signed. No one was going to give us shows – I had to go out and do everything pretty much on my own. I bought a bar so we could get a gig. That way, we wouldn’t have to abide by any rules, we could play for as long as we wanted, we could get the soundchecks and the performances we wanted. At the same time, when the band wasn’t playing, I could make a little money to support my family. I paid for our whole fucking first demo too. It cost $40,000. I worked my ass off, man. I borrowed from my family, I got a loan and I did some work for my old man. Instead of giving it to my family, I put it all into this band. I knew this band was going to be special. I knew it was going to be exactly what it became. Getting signed was nothing to me because I knew it would happen. I always knew I was going to be here and I always knew I was going to do exactly what I’ve done. But I didn’t know all the responsibility or tragedy along the way.”

ON RECORDING SLIPKNOT’S DEBUT ALBUM

“To this day, I still haven’t had a recording experience like recording our debut. It was so real. The fear of not knowing is what most of it was about. We had left home and driven all the way to California and most of us had never left home before. It was a fucking madhouse in there. Did I have any notion of how good an album we were making? Absolutely. I’m not going to lie: I hated everyone and everything and I couldn’t wait to stick my fist right up everyone’s ass. This album was the fist. I couldn’t wait for the world to see us.”

ON BEING UNDERSTOOD

“People have said that, when the apocalypse happens, poets and artists will be the ones who’ll explain what happened. That’s what I felt when we put out our debut album. You should have seen those kids singing those lyrics back man, it really made that shit real. Seeing those kids sing our songs back to me also made me feel my life was real. It wasn’t, ‘Oh my god, these guys know our words, we must be famous’. I didn’t care about that. I looked at them and thought, ‘Wow, they feel like I do, so my life is real, my feelings are real and my hatred, anger and love are all real.’”

ON PROVING HIMSELF

“The minute you turn your face on us, we’ll smack you right in the mouth. I’m not scared of you, I’m not scared of the world, I’m not scared of a bunch of jaded little fucking fans who want to turn their backs. Our fans stick with us because they were chosen to do this just like we were. We represent real shit and that’s always going to have a place and it’s always going to have an uphill battle. We’ve proven ourselves – have you proven yourself yet?”

Officer Downe is set for release on November 18.

The Slipknot Quiz: how well do you know Iowa's infamous 9?