Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Ozzy Osbourne - Scream

Ozzy Osbourne - Scream - 2010

This is, I believe, the 63rd review in this series. I've never tried anything like this. I can't believe I got through it. And thanks to everyone who helped (you know who you are).

We traveled the journey of Heavy Metal by way of the primary architects. Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. And we've come to the end.

At the age of 62, Ozzy Osbourne is the latest, perhaps the last, of these titans of thunder rock to release new material. His album from last year is called Scream. Let's listen.

1. Let it Die - Very different from Ozzy. His voice is hyper processed, singing in his low, almost talk-y register, overdubbed with gutteral screams. I like this side of him. Kevin Churko is back as producer and Gus G., a young Greek guitarist takes over for Zakk Wylde. His sound is more muted, more...Avenged Sevenfold? I'm only aware of them through Guitar Hero/Rock Band. Maybe it's Lamb of God (thanks, allmusic!) This song is murderous. I dig it.
2. Let Me Hear You Scream - I like to listen to metal LOUD. I've got my noise canceling headphones on and I got lost in the drone of the opening track. And then this exploded and really woke me the fuck up. Kind of like Andrew W.K. with purpose. If that's even possible. Makes sense to me.....
3. Soul Sucker - The original title for the album. A mediocre, sludge metal placeholder that picks up the pace and goes for the jugular. That's what a lot this reminds me of, like the kids who adored Painkiller decided to make a giant metal album with Ozzy.
4. Life Won't Wait - A mid-tempo acoustic piece married to metal. A kick drum that is begging to be played on an enormous stage, then the song takes left turns on the bridge and stays relatively unexpected. Alternately pretty and aggro. The melody is pretty great, too. Nice.
5. Digging Me Down - Trippy, psychedelic opening with a neat little acoustic filagree. But you know that's not gonna last...and it doesn't. By minute 2 the guitar triplet stroke attack acts like an auger complimenting the one thing that Ozzy has that Dio and Iommi could never get their hands around. Melody. Ozzy just knows what to do with his voice and how to write a song you kind of want to listen to.
6. Crucify - Typical, "irreverent" doom metal. But it doesn't last that long because it's about to crash into:
7. Fearless - This song, with it's driving devil horn, head bang attack could easily have fit in on Blizzard and Gus does his best to impersonate Randy every once in a while with a finger tap flourish, only to dive back into the mosh pit and crush the eardrums. My favorite song so far.
8. Time - Oooh, what's that? Amidst the pulsating bass and the giant drums? Can it be Beach Boys-style backing "oohs"? Yes. Is this a ready made mid-concert flame raiser? Sure. Every Ozzy album's got one. He knows that you gotta sway every once in a while. But, this song just keeps building, the chorus belies the premise. It's not pretty. It's enormous. Calling to mind the '00 Everclear album, Learning How To Smile.
9. I Want More - More cruch. More licks. More chukka chukka. More worms boring into my skull. Works for me.
10. Latimer's Mercy - The album comes full circle as the down tuning, low register, softening keys, swirl together to give a 62 year old man a sense of relevance and urgency.
11. I Love You All - A coda. An ode to Lennon in spirit. A song of gratitude. Nice to know you appreciate your fans, Oz. Well done.

Obviously, Gus G. and new drummer Tommy Clufetos are loaded for bear, they've got a lot to prove and they're up to the task. Brand Ozzy is smart to put their musical future in the hands of these guys. Ozzy sounds like he could tour in the 21st century metal world and not resort to becoming an oldies act. How he's managed this is grist for some book. My money's on Sharon.
I look forward to more from Ozz.

And with that, the Purple Sabbath journey has come to an end.

Grade: A-
ASide: Let it Die, Let Me Hear You Scream, Fearless
BlindSide: Life Won't Wait, Time

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Ozzy Osbourne - Black Rain

Ozzy Osbourne - Black Rain - 2007

"I'm not going away!" Ozzy screams amidst the post-metal industrial backing and siren wail of Zakk Wylde's guitar. He's pretty earnest about it. I believe him. After turning himself into a reality tv clown, rocket-fueling his wife's talk show career and turning his kids into mini-tabloid wrecks, Ozzy comes back as though none of that mattered. Like it never happened.
The dude is 60! And his trademark high-whine wail is sort of missing but the unmistakable voice cuts through the industrial metal sound.
Ozzy will not go peacefully into that good night. He's a brand, as I've said before. And that brand is a huge cash cow. Why stop?
There's some good, crunchy 21st century riff-tastic metal ("I Don't Wanna Stop", Ozzy's first number one!, "Trap Door"), some quasi-industrial pop metal ("Black Rain", "Silver"), half-assed, world conscious ballad ("Lay Your World on Me"), heart felt mega ballad ("Here for You") and on and on. It's a calculated record. It's not totally inspired but it's not shallow and callous. I think Ozzy really loves playing this part and, somehow, he manages to not suck and sound relevant. How does he do that????
He's more cynical than usual, take for instance "The Almighty Dollar", its hard to take him seriously knowing just how filthy rich he is. Or maybe he's really extolling the virtue of it and it just SOUNDS cynical.
This is goth/pop metal constructed in a lab by people who, thankfully, love the genre.

Grade: B+
ASide: I Don't Wanna Stop
BlindSide: Black Rain, Silver
DownSide: The Almighty Dollar

Review #434

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Ozzy Osbourne - Down to Earth

Ozzy Osbourne - Down to Earth - 2001

I'm going to be extraordinarily kind to Oz right about now. At this point he's the only one standing from the original metal bands.
Sabbath is over.
Dio is a cartoon version of what he THINKS metal is turning into.
Deep Purple is a funk/prog jam band.
By 2001 Metal had given over to a new breed. The days of hippy psych metal gave way to glam which became hair metal and was wiped away by Tool, Korn and math rock.
But Ozzy had one thing the other bands did NOT have: Sharon.
Ozzy comes across as barely functional. But the daughter of his manager who became his manager sure learned a lot at the feet of her father. And thing one was never think you are better or lesser than your audience. Be the band they want you to be.
So, he became the Prince of Fucking Darkness.
He hired great players and good songwriters and excellent producers and made records.
Ozzy's sound hasn't changed much since the last record and he knows where his bread is buttered. One of my favorite tracks in the entire catalog is the opener for this one. "Gets Me Through" is the one where he acknowledges his past, his roots and his gratitude for his fans.
The ballad, "Running Out Of Time" has just enough weirdo Floydian production mixed through a taffy machine of metal and Queen that it becomes a great centerpiece. The other ballad, "Dreamer" shoots a little to hard for the Aerosmith money.
I like Down to Earth. As much as the last one. Maybe even a little more.

Grade: A
ASide: Gets Me Through
BlindSide: Running Out of Time
DownSide: Black Illusion

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Ozzy Osbourne - Ozzmosis

Ozzy Osbourne - Ozzmosis - 1995

It's been a few years since No More Tears but that hasn't changed Ozzy's 90s era attack.
Loud. Big guitars. Heavy production. Ozzfest would start the next year, so I guess this is the album that kicked that off.
But, where Tears was a seemingly joyous celebration of ear blasting pop metal, Ozzmosis heads in the other direction. Over processed vocals, meanderingly gothic songwriting, there are times when Ozzy seems to be fighting just to be heard. He should look at the cover of the record and note the name of the band. There are a ton of co-writers on this disc. Lemmy's back on "See You on the Other Side" and Mark Hudson of the Hudson Brothers (and Kate's uncle) helps Ozzy get back in touch with his inner Beatles on "Ghost Behind My Eyes" but even the production and starpower songwriting can't really save this record.
Because of the gloss and Ozzy's resilience, I find myself rooting for the record to succeed but the makers are so steeped in the darkness that overshadowed all metal in the 90s that it's impossible to do so. Look, Ozzy, you are not Tool. Stop trying to be. On "Thunder Underground" he and his cronies take everything that makes Tool great and misses the mark completely. Trading in style for sheer loudness is not making music. It's making ears hurt. I like it when my ears hurt. From good music. Like "See You On The Other Side", Lemmy's contribution, a mid-tempo arena rocker that almost fails due to excess but pulls itself back from the edge to be, well, the best thing on the record.
Ozzmosis just drones on and on and just when you think it's never going to stop being indulgently uninteresting...along comes a song co-written by Steve Vai to show you, you were right. It's never going to stop.
Then, wayyyyy at the end, the very last song, after the interminably long and headache inducing "My Jeckyll Doesn't Hyde" (Ugh, what a title) comes a lovely little piano driven piece called "Old L.A. Tonight". Of course it gets gigantic, it has to, Ozzy's all about excess, but there's good ol' Rick Wakeman on keys to keep it all high minded.
But, there's no way a little piano flourishes can save this piece of dog crap.

Grade: D
ASide:
BlindSide: See You On the Other Side
DownSide: Thunder Underground

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Ozzy Osbourne - No More Tears

Ozzy Osbourne - No More Tears - 1991

Xylophones and toys are scary. Let's face it. Ever since Poltergeist we've known that. That's how No More Tears starts out. The hyper-demonic "Mr. Tinkertrain" sets the table with a song from the perspective of a child abuser and the album never relents from there.
This is Ozzy's comeback. He's finally over Randy Rhodes's death and he's reinventing himself as the heir apparent to all things metal.
He succeeds spectacularly.
No More Tears is a big record. It requires that you play it loud.
Not only is Zakk Wylde a major contributor to the songwriting but his playing is inspired. And Ozzy's no dummy. He's brought in Lemmy Kilmeister as a lyricist on a bunch of tracks.
And it all works. The massive soundtrack to MTV montage lifestyle amid images of returning soldiers from the first Iraq war, "Mama I'm Coming Home" just plain wins. There's more radio friendly metal-ness on the title track and S.I.N. but I think my favorite track is the cheeky, percussive "Zombie Stomp". Sure, it's dumb, but they know it's dumb and there's a weird Michael Jackson quality to it.
I know. Go figure.
Ozzy's comeback is great. A worthy addition to any metal collection.

Grade: A
ASide: Mr. Tinkertrain, Mama I'm Coming Home
BlindSide: I Don't Want to Change the World, Zombie Stomp, A.V.H., Road to Nowhere

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Ozzy Osbourne - No Rest for the Wicked

Ozzy Osbourne - No Rest for the Wicked - 1989

For the most part this record was co-produced by one of my favorite producers, Roy Thomas Baker, he of The Cars, Queen and The Darkness among many many others.
Ozzy also has a new guitarist, kicking Jake Lee to the curb in favor of Zakk Wylde, how great a metal name is that??
As it stands it's pretty standard late 80s metal fare. If you grew up with this stuff, as I did, you probably got pretty tired of it by now. Interestingly, the fates of Sabbath and Ozzy seem to have flip flopped. Iommi dedicated himself to what he did best, write riffs and construct songs in a very specific idiom. Ozzy is a lead singer. Not really a singer songwriter, one wonders of he ever actually picked up an instrument. The fact that he was always being marketed as either the Prince of Darkness or a crazy bat eater or an ant snorter were all clues to his limited potential. He's completely reliant on the people and players he hires to write with him and sell his brand.
He manages to reinvigorate himself and his listeners by finding a new guitarist but I'm pretty sure that gleam is gonna come off the rose soon.

No surprises on Wicked. It's a hair better than Ultimate Sin. Okay, more than a hair. It's on par with Bark. That's not really saying much.
Baker's touch can be found in places like the production frills of Bloodbath in Paradise, one of the better tracks on the record. I think that says more about RTB than it does for Oz. That said, the entire affair gets a LOT more interesting toward the end as the band seems to be having more salacious fun ("Tattooed Dancer", "Demon Alcohol"). But it's not enough to raise the album above average status.

Grade: B-
ASide: Bloodbath in Paradise, Hero
BlindSide: Devil's Daughter, Tattooed Dancer
DownSide: Crazy Babies

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Ozzy Osbourne - The Ultimate Sin

Ozzy Osbourne - The Ultimate Sin - 1986

I swear to god, "Secret Loser" sounds like Ratt's "Round and Round". And that's the problem with mid-80s metal. By now all these bands are starting to sound like each other. I don't know whose fault it is, I put the blame on everybody. Metal was big money in the mid 80s. Forced to share the stage with Michael Jackson just pushed everybody to come up with the next hit for a voracious sea of fans who, the labels and bands must have been assuming, would buy anything.
So Ratt sounds like Ozzy which sounds like Sabbath which sounds like.....You got your big ass shredatstic lead solos, the finger tapping craziness, over compressed drum pummeling, soaring vocals. It's all formula by now. And it's nowhere near as prevalent as it is on this record.
Interesting sidenote: Ozzy has never reissued this record. It has been all but deleted from his back catalog. If you hear it you will know why.
There's a little political commentary on this record. "Killer of Giants" is a way too on the nose plea for the end of nuclear standoffs and "Thank God for the Bomb"...is the opposite?
Osbourne and Daisley aren't really the best voices for this type of criticism, they're better suited to, I dunno, shrieking about monsters and murder and rock and roll.
The single (at the end of the record!!) "Shot in the Dark" is as generic a piece of radio friendly pap that renders Ozzy nearly anonymous on his own record. That said, it's the best song on the album.

Grade: D+
ASide: Shot in the Dark
BlindSide: Never
Downside: Secret Loser, Lightning Strikes

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Ozzy Osbourne - Bark at the Moon

Ozzy Osbourne - Bark at the Moon - 1983

Randy Rhodes died.
And that's pretty much the whole story here.
Jake Lee is hired as his replacement and it almost works. The title track is great, energetic, shreddy. The rest of the album is....like carbon paper.
If Diary of a Madman is Blizzard of Ozz part 2, this was both of the albums as copied by a cover band. That isn't to say that its unlistenable, it's not. It's fine. There just no explosively mind bending brilliance. Lee doesn't have Rhodes's chops (the closest he gets is on the late album monster "Slow Down" and Ozzy seems to be going through the motions.

Grade: C
ASide: Bark at the Moon
BlindSide: Slow Down
DownSide: Centre of Eternity
DownSide:

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Ozzy Osbourne - Diary of a Madman

Ozzy Osbourne – Diary of a Madman – 1981

Blizzard of Ozz part 2. this one actually follows the same pattern laid down by Blizzard. Great opener “Over the Mountain”, blistering follow-up “Flying High Again”, power ballad “You Can't Kill Rock and Roll”. And so on. Instead of “Mr. Crowley”, the dark side two opener is “Little Dolls”, Just as ominous a track with a little toe in Ozzy's psychedelic roots. Really little.
By now the guys have settled down from the launchpad of “we'll show you how great we are” to the perch of “we've won, we are the gods of metal”. Because of that, there are few surprises. Like we need surprises when you've got Randy Rhodes. Let him loose to do his stuff. He's not gonna be around forever, you know...
I'm usually not a huge fan of Power Metal Ballads, but I have a soft spot for “Tonight”. It evokes lonely Saturday night cruising in the 80s. Hoping for something to happen. Driving your beater or your dad's big boat of a Chrysler down main street while your best friend makes out with the hotter girl in the back seat. Jamming the brakes every once in a while out of jealousy. Ending up in the same place you started. Which really isn't so bad. Cuz one day you'll leave that town. You'll be something.

You don't need Diary of a Madman if you already own Blizzard of Ozz. But it won't hurt to have it or hear it.

Grade: A-
Aside: Over the Mountain, Flying High Again
BlindSide: Little Dolls, Tonight, S.A.T.O.

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Ozzy Osbourne - Blizzard of Ozz

Ozzy Osbourne – Blizzard of Ozz – 1980

“Daddy, I want music, not talk!” my four year old daughter shouted to me as we were on a run to the pharmacy last night.
“You got it!” I said and fired up Blizzard of Ozz, which was next on the Listening Post list anyway.
“Daddy! Wanna see my leg kick dance?!?”
I looked back and saw Zoe kicking and jerking her feet to the music.
“You like this music, Zig Zag?” my most often used nickname for her.
“Yeah!”.

Until “Goodbye To Romance”, that is. She doesn't dig the ballads.

When I was 15 I had a job in the greasy spoon in the tourist of Bar Harbor. I mixed the cole slaw and, eventually, I was graduated to fish chowder.
That's when I met Pete. My best friend for a couple years until we lost touch in the early 90s, Pete was a lover of all things metal. Pantera, Van Halen and Ozzy. It was he who convinced me to go to the Bangor State Fair to see Ozzy in concert. He convinced me to bring the album cover with me and wave it, which was a burden, actually.
Because of Peter Daher I got to the concert so early that I was 3 people from the stage. Because of him I saw a new band that really caught fire with both of us, a little band called Def Leppard. Because of him Randy Rhodes looked me right in the eye and smiled at me through a solo.
Thanks, Pete.

Blizzard of Ozz is a perfect record. Even if I hadn't had those experiences I would love this record. Watching my daughter react to it the way she did 30 years later proves that for me. I think a lot of that has to do with healthy competition and need to prove himself after leaving Sabbath.
Of course, without Randy Rhodes I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be writing any of that.
Rhodes brought a magical combination of adoration for the idiom of metal, a respect for classical music, a slavish disciples talent (my god, how many fingers did that man even have? 15?) and a sense of a little bit of radio friendly ear candy.
All of this together brings us classics like “Crazy Train”, “Mr. Crowley” “I Don't Know” AND acoustic gems like “Dee” which bleeds into the righteous “Suicide Solution”. There's room for that power ballad because there's so much of everything else going on.

I find it interesting that both Ozzy and Sabbath would choose to use sacrilegious imagery on their covers. From Ozzy's cross-as-weapon to Sabbath's smoking angels (a theme copied by Van Halen just a couple years later). Dead Kennedys would incorporate the same anti-religious themes on their In God we Trust, inc the next year. No doubt this was all a reaction to the Moral Majority's rise in America.
It all fits the music, by the way.
But I digress.
In short:
I love this record.

Grade: A+
Aside: I Don't Know, Crazy Train, Suicide Solution, Mr. Crowley
BlindSide: Dee, Revelation (Mother Earth), Steal Away (The Night)
DownSide: