NETFLIX: Black Sabbath Guitarist Tony Iommi C…read more.
Long before he became the father of heavy metal, Tony Iommi was just a quiet kid from Birmingham, working in a factory, dreaming in riffs. This October, Netflix is giving fans an intimate seat into his life story with a brand-new documentary titled “The Iron Man of Metal.”
For decades, Tony Iommi has been the steel backbone of Black Sabbath, the quiet genius behind the haunting guitar that launched a global movement. But until now, few outside the music world truly understood the man behind the power chords.
“I never set out to invent anything,” Iommi says softly in the film’s trailer. “I just didn’t want to stop playing.”
Directed by Asif Kapadia (Amy, Senna), the documentary doesn’t just focus on the music it digs into the soul of a man who turned pain into something eternal. It retraces his journey through childhood, fame, loss, reinvention, and ultimately peace all while carrying the weight of a sound that changed the world.
The story begins where his life nearly took a tragic detour. At 17, while working at a sheet metal factory, Iommi lost the tips of two fingers in an accident. Most would have walked away from music. But he didn’t. He fashioned homemade plastic fingertips, detuned his guitar to ease the pain, and in doing so, created a new, darker, heavier sound one that would define Black Sabbath and the genre that followed.
“I thought it was over,” he admits in the film. “But something inside said, ‘Keep going.’ So I did.”
The Iron Man of Metal features candid interviews with Iommi, along with those who’ve stood beside him across decades Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler, Brian May, Rob Halford, and others. But more than that, it features quiet moments: personal photos, laughter with family, footage of Tony at home strumming softly, smiling like a man who has finally made peace with it all.
There are stories of hardship too the tensions within Black Sabbath, the weight of touring, the loneliness of fame, and the battle with cancer that forced Iommi to pause everything and face mortality head-on.
Yet through it all, there’s a theme that emerges: survival.
This isn’t just a documentary about music. It’s about the courage to start again. About how something broken can still build beauty. About how a boy from Birmingham, raised in smoke and steel, made the world feel something raw and real.
Netflix will premiere The Iron Man of Metal globally on October 18, 2025, with special screenings in select cities, including Iommi’s hometown. For fans, it’s more than a film it’s a chance to say thank you.
Because behind the darkness and distortion was always a kind soul who simply refused to quit.
And in every sense of the word, Tony Iommi truly is an Iron Man.
