Black Rain sounds sufficiently strong to please all Ozzy's fans

Everybody knows who is Ozzy Osborne; probably the only person he may be compared with is Paul McCartney – both of them are enormously authoritative, influential, successful and active, they even are of approximately the same age, the principal distinction is that they are completely different people. Of course, Ozzy was experiencing missteps during his career but who cares about it today. He had enough time to create a real halo of untouchable idol around himself, to produce piles of rumors and to become one of the most memorable figures in music history. However, his demonic image has notably frayed out with years or rather almost disappeared. A new generation of Ozzy's fans takes him in absolutely different way than those who's been buying up his albums 25 years ago. Well, that TV reality show The Osbornes had its share of irony, but image will be image, therefore nowadays official Ozzy looks like pleased with his life ex-alcoholic who can still kick some ass if there is such a necessity. It looks honest, unvarnished and unadorned. Nevertheless, Ozzy is recognized almighty dad of Heavy Metal and in this year he decided to remind everybody about that one more time. Black Rain is his ninth ever since and first for the last six years studio album, which offers nothing really new but is strong and powerful enough to please all his fans.

Ozzy remains himself

In fact, Ozzy doesn't give his fans a chance to rejoice that often. Four albums in sixteen years is not much, admit that. But it is pardonable for Ozzy Osborne. He has found his niche long time ago and never tries to reinvent the thing that works so good and actually this is what people want to hear from him. People want Ozzy to be Ozzy, and so he does. Black Rain is a big, loud, hard and heavy album. However, not that inspired as Osmosis but much better than Down To Earth. With Zakk Wild, Rob Nicholson and Mike Bordin by his side Ozzy offers a bunch of mid tempo generic songs and a couple of ballads. One doesn't have to look far for the good examples, the very first song Not Going Away is quite a worthy variant, it has everything Ozzy's fan needs – enormous heaviness, nice melody, perfect solo guitar and of course Prince Of Darkness' famous snuffling wails. The album's leading single is I Don't Wonna Stop. The song is made in the vain of material from No More Tears and after the gloomy viscosity of the first track it sounds rather briskly. A song called Black Rain in its turn reminds Ozzmosis – it is pretty slow and has that dark fiction atmosphere. Nevertheless the album has some unusual moments too. The Almighty Dollar for example sounds quite uncharacteristic for Ozzy in both melody and song structure.

The album sounds really reputable

Ozzy is going to celebrate his 60th anniversary in a year and a half but still it is hard to say that his age has influenced his voice too strikingly. Of course, he sticks to a lower register now and doesn't sound with the same expressiveness - this is evident, but he still got his charisma. Material – that's what needs mentioning. Honestly speaking Ozzy doesn't write heavy metal songs any longer. Here he proceeds with those things he started at Ozzmosis. The album sounds big and massive but the material is rather a dark heavy rock with a slight hazy psychedelic feel than anything else. However such presentation sounds really reputable, it perfectly matches his status and age. It would be interesting to know, by the way, how the album could sound if there was somebody else instead Zakk Wild. He is Ozzy's most long-standing guitarist and we must be obliged to him for Ozzy's recent albums too. He is so good in making this seemingly worn out riffing fresh and always finds something new and unexplored. Overall, Black Rain is just that good album you could expect from Ozzy Osborne. The album won't change your life but it will hardly disappoint you either.

30.05.2007