Ozzman Cometh, The - Ozzy Osbourne

I’ll say right away that the prospect of a best of album from the greatest metal performer of all time, John "Ozzy" Osbourne, practically had me foaming at the mouth. Ozzy is the face of metal music, period, and this album should have stood as a testament to his immortal legacy among the metal gods.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite live up to this promise, being, on the whole, a rather mixed bag. However, to begin ...
...early, previously unreleased basement tapes versions of classic Black Sabbath tracks - Black Sabbath itself and Warpigs. This is really the tour de force of the album - taking up 15 minutes of it, and showing off that nobody, bar nobody did heavy metal better than Black Sabbath. They may have waned in the latter days but these really are prime cuts. The guitar sound can be described as nothing on this earth, but the word Troglodyte comes to mind ... more

I’ll say right away that the prospect of a best of album from the greatest metal performer of all time, John "Ozzy" Osbourne, practically had me foaming at the mouth. Ozzy is the face of metal music, period, and this album should have stood as a testament to his immortal legacy among the metal gods.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite live up to this promise, being, on the whole, a rather mixed bag. However, to begin with, it all looks rather promising, as we get very early, previously unreleased basement tapes versions of classic Black Sabbath tracks - Black Sabbath itself and Warpigs. This is really the tour de force of the album - taking up 15 minutes of it, and showing off that nobody, bar nobody did heavy metal better than Black Sabbath. They may have waned in the latter days but these really are prime cuts. The guitar sound can be described as nothing on this earth, but the word Troglodyte comes to mind - powerful, savage, primitive and dark. The production is a lot less polished than on the studio albums, making the whole things sound more like what the songs were originally supposed to sound like - they were, after all, written to be played live. Warpigs appears in its original version without the hurried change of lyrics which appear on the Paranoid album. I gather it was originally supposed to be called Walpurgis and the lyrics cover themes of Satanism, witchcraft and sacrifice which fit the dark tone of the music excellently. Ozzy’s voice too was at it’s best n these days, his sinister banshee wail ruling over these songs and dominating the sound.

However, Goodbye to Romance, while a pleasant enough ballad, should never have been included here. It only serves to show off the worst excesses of Ozzy as a Bon Jovi impersonating power balladeer. Also fitting into this category is Mama I’m Coming Home, which, though a good deal better than the last example, should also have been left off.

Luckily, some real solo era classics appear - Bark at the Moon, Mister Crowley and a live version of Paranoid with the late Rhandy Rhoads on guitar - an awesome tour de force of swirling guitars which concentrates more in the elaborate solos than on Ozzy, but which nonetheless cannot fail to impress.

However, once again we have the awful keyboard driven tripe that is I Just Want You on this album, which should have been destroyed before release, never mind being put on a best of. The lyrics are trite and mediocre at best, there is absolutely no feeling at all in Ozzy’s monotonous droning voice and the repetitive keyboard ‘riff’ just caps off this abomination. Why oh why they ever thought of including this piece of tripe is beyond me.

The last song is a previously unreleased song with a slightly ‘gothy’ style to it, which works OK thanks to Ozzy’s vocals, but otherwise is nothing special.

To conclude, Ozzy is a great guy, no doubts about it. But he has put out a lot of rubbish along with the classics, and too much of it has been included here for me to give this a very good mark.

It is boosted to average only by the inclusion of the early Sabbath tracks which are simply some of the best versions of the best songs I have ever heard.
 

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