Ozzy Osbourne at Myspace

This album’s a guilty pleasure for me. It’s billed as live but clearly heavily overdone in the studio, as the contrast between Ozzy’s drunken rambling and his vocals in the songs themselves is obvious. But still, I enjoy it. Ozzy doesn’t perform any of his solo material, but sticks to songs he performed in Black Sabbath exclusively. Apparently, this album was released in order to compete with the Dio-era Sabbath album “Live Evil”. Randy Rhoads had just died, so he isn’t on this, and he was replaced by Brad Gillis, who would become famous with the AOR band Night Ranger, and he’s really no replacement for either Rhoads or Tony Iommi.

So why do I like this album? For one thing, the bass is awesome. Rudy Sarzo of Quiet Riot and Whitesnake plays on this album, and it makes me wonder why he was wasting his time with those lame pop metal bands, as he’s awesome here with his fuzzy bass tone. But my favorite part of the album is Ozzy’s between-song banter. He is just gloriously drunk, and I kept cracking up over his cries of “LOWDAH! LOWDAH!”, him falsely taking credit for writing the song “Black Sabbath” and yelling “KEEP ON SMOKIN’ IT!” at the end of “Sweet Leaf”. Although I enjoy this album, I can’t really recommend it, but die-hard Sabbath and Ozzy fans might want to check it out.

NOTE: This album is no longer being produced, so check used CD stores or download it on iTunes if you want it. Also, it should be noted that early CD pressings are missing “Sweet Leaf”.

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 @ 2:22 am Heavy Metal
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