Osbourne Reunion (1997–2006)

In the summer of 1997, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Ozzy Osbourne officially reunited to co-headline the Ozzfest festival tour along side Osbourne's solo band. The lineup featured Osbourne's drummer Mike Bordin filling in for Bill Ward, who was unable to participate because of previous commitments with his solo project, The Bill Ward Band. In December 1997, the group was joined by Ward, marking the first reunion of the original four members since Osbourne's 1992 "retirement show". The original lineup recorded two shows at the Birmingham NEC, which were released as the double live album Reunion on 20 October 1998. Reunion reached number eleven on the Billboard 200, and went platinum in the US. The album spawned the single "Iron Man", which won Black Sabbath its first Grammy award in 2000 for Best Metal Performance, 30 years after the song was originally released. Reunion also featured two new studio tracks, "Psycho Man" and "Selling My Soul", both of which cracked the top 20 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.

Shortly before the band embarked on a European tour in the summer of 1998, drummer Bill Ward suffered a heart attack and was temporarily replaced by former drummer Vinny Appice. Ward returned in time for the US tour with openers Pantera, which began in January 1999 and continued through the summer, headlining the annual Ozzfest tour. Following the Ozzfest appearances, the band was put on hiatus while members worked on solo material. Tony Iommi released his first official solo album, Iommi, in 2000, while Osbourne continued work on his next solo release, Down to Earth.

Black Sabbath returned to the studio to work on new material with all four original members and producer Rick Rubin in the spring of 2001, but the sessions were halted when Osbourne was called away to finish tracks for his solo album in the summer of 2001. "It just came to an end", Iommi said. "We didn't go any further, and it's a shame because [the songs] were really good". Iommi commented on the difficulty getting all of the band members together to work on material: It's quite different recording now. We've all done so much in between. In [the early] days there was no mobile phone ringing every five seconds. When we first started, we had nothing. We all worked for the same thing. Now everybody has done so many other things. It's great fun and we all have a good chat, but it's just different, trying to put an album together.

In March 2002, Ozzy Osbourne's Emmy winning reality TV show "The Osbournes" debuted on MTV, and quickly became a worldwide hit. The show introduced Osbourne to a broader audience and to capitalise, the band's back catalogue label, Sanctuary Records released a double live album Past Lives, which featured concert material recorded in the '70s, including the previously unofficial Live at Last album. The band remained on hiatus until the summer of 2004 when they returned to headline Ozzfest 2004 and 2005. In November 2005, Black Sabbath were inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame, and in March 2006, after eleven years of eligibility, the band were inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. At the awards ceremony Metallica played two Black Sabbath songs, "Hole in the Sky" and "Iron Man" in tribute to the band.