“Most days I wake up just wanting to die/But I still try”, confides grandpa Ozzy in his unchanged voice, despite Parkinson’s disease, on Mr Darkness. The sentence, heavy, perfectly encapsulates the project of this second album in two years, both testament and retrospective, each chapter unfolding like a double nod to its loaded past and its inevitable end.
Posted yesterday at 12:00 p.m.
Whereas Ordinary Man (2020) seemed to have been recorded with the objective of allowing the Ozzman to reconnect with the FM charts, this 13e disc justifies its existence in its moments emancipating itself with the most ardor from the sterile format of the radios of modern rock. This is the case of the title song, Patient Number 9, an indomitable ride of more than seven minutes sublimated by Jeff Beck. With a guest list of many six-string gods, patriarch Osbourne proves that like him, guitar soloing in 2022 may not be as strong as it once was. but is certainly not dead.
His former colleague Tony Iommi visits him for two songs, No Escape From Nowwhich lacks Black Sabbath only in name, and Degradation Ruleson which the singer dusts off his harmo.
All the Ozzys are therefore summoned to Patient Number 9 : that of the power ballads to bawl in his beer (God Only Knowswith the poignant contribution of Dave Navarro), that of the pop metal of No More Tears (1991) and also the one who persists in aggravating his own deafness problem (thanks to Zakk Wylde and his cracked eleven amp). Was it necessary to call Eric Clapton for the saccharine One of Those Days ? No, but an Ozzy album wouldn’t be an Ozzy album without at least one obvious lack of taste.
“But I’ll never die/cause I’m immortal”, proclaims the man who has spent his life taunting the Grim Reaper and who obviously wants to live as long as possible.
Metal
Patient Number 9
Ozzy Osbourne
epic