Flaming Lips and Modest Mouse honor Ozzy Osbourne in Minneapolis

They didn’t bite the heads off any bats, but the Flaming Lips and the singer of Modest Mouse did take flight in Minneapolis on Friday night with a monstrous Black Sabbath cover in tribute to Ozzy Osbourne.

The two eccentric and chaotic alt-rock groups — seemingly weird candidates to honor the Prince of Darkness given their lack of metallicity — paired up to perform “War Pigs” together near the end of a packed co-headlining concert at the Armory. Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse returned to the stage to trade verses with the Lips’ Wayne Coyne as the penultimate tune of the night, which Coyne introduced simply as “a song from 1970.”

“We’re doing it for Ozzy,” he added, referencing the Black Sabbath frontman who died on July 22 at age 76 after several years of declining health.

Coyne and Brock playfully acted out some of the lyrics during the song’s instrumental parts, wrestling for a bit and pretending to go to war with each other. At one point Coyne even turned his silver wizard whip made up of streamers on Brock, who had spent the prior few songs watching the Lips from the security pit in front of the stage with his two delighted-looking school-age daughters.

As usual, Coyne and his Oklahoman acid-punk band put on a dizzyingly colorful performance that looked like something out of the kids’ TV show “Yo Gabba Gabba.” They blew up towering, inflatable pink robots right at the start of their 80-minute set for “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pts. 1 and 2” and then proceeded to blow off an arsenal of confetti in the third song, “Turn it On.” Later, dancers in eyeball costumes joined them during “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song.”