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 It’s so good to have Ozzy Osborne, the rock
star, back.
After bumbling around on that reality show like an old fool who’s losing
all his faculties at about the same rate that Weight Watchers loose
inches, the self-confessed Prince Of Darkness has returned to the studio
to do what he does best; not getting muddled up over how to turn on his
telly, but knowing exactly how to turn up the volume and create a beast
of an album.
Throughout ten tracks of bone-crunching rock, Ozzy and his right hand
man, guitarist and Black Label Society frontman Zakk Wylde, deliver an
education in exactly how rock music should be done.
And just to prove that he really is still the Prince of Darkness, Ozzy
opens his latest release with the aptly titled ‘Not Going Away’, his
trademark wailing vocal soaring like a vulture over Wylde’s beefy riff,
enforcing the fact that he’s ‘Not Going Away... After all, [he’s] still
crazy.”
From there, ‘Black Rain’ unveils it’s highlight early on in the form of
the joyously fun ‘I Don’t Wanna Stop’. Like a locomotive loaded with Pro
Plus charging off the rails at full speed, ‘I Don’t Wanna Stop’ brings
to mind the likes of Motley Crue with it’s upbeat refrain of ‘All my
life I’ve been over the top, I don’t know what I’m doing all I know is
don’t wanna stop’, and a riff that swings around like a chainsaw.
If you thought ‘Paranoid’ was a great slice of easily accessible heavy
metal for the masses, well you ain’t heard nothin’ until you’ve heard
this.
Things take a turn for the different with ‘The Almighty’, which is
exactly that, mighty. Slower, plodding in the best possible sense of the
word and with groove-drenched guitar and some deliciously funky bass,
it’s the sound of Ozzy going all industrial on us yet sounding great
none the less.
And when he’s not being industrial, he’s being Bon Jovi, with the
piano-laden ballad ‘Here For You’, a heartfelt ode to love, life, and
assumingly his wife, it makes for a welcome break from all the crunching
guitars and bruising drums of the tracks that precede and follow it.
Then, Black Rain comes to an end with the menacing ‘Trap Door’. Despite
our hopes, it’s probably not a tribute to that ugly blue clay thing in
the kid’s TV show of the same name, but nonetheless it’s a stormer of a
finale, an all-out rock yer socks off number that brings the album to a
wonderful close.
And then it’s over, Ozzy Osborne proving without a shadow of a doubt
that he’s far from a bumbling old man, and still has what it takes to
make some killer music.
Recommended Link:
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www.ozzy.com
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