Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi Featured in First Episode of New Heavy Metal Animated Series

As the metal world celebrates Tony Iommi's 67th birthday today (Feb. 19), the legendary Black Sabbath guitarist is being featured in a new animated series. VH1.com is rolling out The Complete History of Heavy Metal, and you can watch the first episode "Fingers Bloody Fingers" above.

In the episode, Iommi recounts how the tips of two of his fingers on his fretting hand were chopped off in an industrial accident. He vowed he would play guitar again, and because of the loss of his fingertips he was forced to play in a different way, which created the signature Sabbath sound.

Iommi was diagnosed with cancer just over three years ago, and recently gave an update on his prognosis. “Because I had two different operations at the same time, one on my prostate and one on my lymph nodes, I had too many scans last year and too much radiation,” he reveals. “So I can’t have any more scans yet. Every day I feel around for lumps and bumps. Every time I get a pain in my stomach I think, ‘Oh God, it’s cancer.’"

Iommi continues, "It’s horrible. I even dream about it. But that’s my life now. The surgeon told me he doesn’t expect the cancer to go away. There’s a 30 percent chance that it could, but more than likely it will come back and it could be any time. I look at life differently now. I could be here another 10 years or just one year – I don’t know.”

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