Let's start with a few wise words from the crazed master of heavy metal. "All my life I've been over the top, I don't know what I'm doing, all I know is I don't wanna stop," he offers on I Don't Wanna Stop.
It's a great sentiment andproof that Ozzy might be rolling on towards 60 but he's not done yet. And when you've got a guitar player like Zakk Wylde behind you, conjuring up a massacre of riffs on the title track or chugging along on The Almighty Dollar, who's going to argue with a new Ozzy album?
Fans, of which he has the most devout kind, will flock to this. However it's hard, when you're confronted with new Ozzy material, not to compare it to Black Sabbath's Paranoid or Ozzy's own Diary of a Madman. Black Rain is good, but it's simply just another Ozzy album. It has to be said though, that as a producer Ozzy sure makes a record sound good.
He's always done the slow, sad, gloomy songs well and sentimental Ozzy comes out to woo us on Lay Your World On Me. But, to be honest, it's a little soppy.
And it's moments like this when you get the feeling a new Ozzy album is strictly for those devout fans and for the great man himself.
