Yahoo! Music Review

Released on 21/05/07
Label: Epic

Ozzy Osbourne has, over recent years, become such a figure of fun that he was running a serious risk of obliterating his own formidable legacy. Be it appearing in a reality TV show with the rest of the family, advertising low fat vegetable spread, participating in an horrendous duet with daughter Kelly or seemingly becoming a national court jester for the Queen's Golden Jubilee, the one-time "Prince of fookin' Darkness" was fast becoming one of rock's greatest caricatures instead of characters.

Perhaps mindful of his diminishing reputation, the former Black Sabbath superstar returns with "Black Rain", his first collection of original material in six years. And it's as much an album that he's had to deliver, as his audience has demanded. That it largely works is due in no small part to Ozzy facing up to who he is and his place in a world that is crumbling all around him. This isn't the hand wringing of a bleeding heart observer but the railing of the artist who raised the same concerns back in the '70s.

So it is that the title track becomes a "War Pigs" for the 21st century as Ozzy sings, "Politicians confuse me / I watch the body count rise / Why are the children all marching / Into the desert to die?", while "Countdown's Begun" conjures up a series of apocalyptic images that are the natural conclusion to the album's cataloguing of consumerism, terrorism and international politics on "The Almighty Dollar".

The impact would be lessened were it not for the contribution of Ozzy's musical co-conspirators. Zakk Wylde's twenty tons of tar-thick riffage, pausing only to doff its cap to Sabbath's Tony Iommi, is both frighteningly colossal and surprisingly economic. The minimum of fret-w*nking serves to highlight the dramas contained here and the interaction between him and former Faith No More tub-thumper Mike Bordin on "I Don't Wanna Stop" is the very stuff of metallic fantasy.

Elsewhere, the mawkish sentiments of "Here For You" feel strangely out of place; coming across as the kind of thing that the execrable David Coverdale specialised in during the '80s, its unnecessary presence slows down the album's otherwise air-punching pace. With Ozzy fast approaching 60, "Black Rain" is far from being the dog that might be expected from the loveable buffoon that's been presented in recent years. And only a churl would grumble when Ozzy declares triumphantly in his trademark nasal whine: "I'm not going away".

    by Julian Marszalek