vikingman369 | As we saw in Bark at the Moon, many of the songs from Ozzy's post-Randy, pre-Zakk Wylde days are more-or-less filler songs, that don't really stick out, they just fill the whole 8 or so tracks on the albums. Now, being a fan of Ozzy, I would love to stick up for this album...but I can't. It's a prelude to the monotony of No Rest for the Wicked.
I was fortunate to have found this album for sale, which is a rare thing. According to Ozzy history, there was some legal issues with one of the writers of the songs and this album was pulled from the category of the Prince of Darkness. However, I found a CD copy (and not the 1995 remasters either) of this and decided to begin my collection with this.
Having not really listened to much of the older or newer material on CD, this was my first Ozzy CD and I had nothing to compare it to. Now that I have other CDs that are both classic and modern hits, I find this album rarely listened to at all.
First off, we have the title track. It sounds good, but its not very special. This album doesn't really pick up speed until the next track, "Secret Loser."
"Thank God For the Bomb" is one of Ozzy's "semi-political" tracks, where he is thankful that hot war is being denied because of the destructive power of the nuclear weapons of his time, the weapon of choice in a hot war. It's one of the few times he was finally able to get something across about how he felt about the world in which he lived. Perhaps the first chances he got were on the Blizzard of Ozz album: "I Don't Know" and "Crazy Train." This is more in line with what we saw in his most famous album from Black Sabbath, Paranoid, rather than the "devil-fangs and shit" of this era.
"Lightning Strikes" is the sixth track off this album, but also happens to be one of the best ones. It has a very anthemic feel to it; if this album were given more attention, this could be one of Ozzy's rock anthems, along with "You Can't Kill Rock'n'Roll" and "Rock'n'Roll Rebel". Perhaps my favorite song from this under-recognized album.
For those of you who are uninterested in Ozzy Osbourne's "softer" material, you've only got one thing to worry about on this album: "Killer of Giants." It's a political song, and the original design for the album's name (kind of like Paranoid). It starts out soft but gets heavy throughout the choruses It's much like any of his other "ballads", except its not introspective or sad, just doom-and-gloom.
The last track is perhaps the only one of the album's songs that have ever gotten recognition. "Shot in the Dark" is okay, but I have not much to say in regards to praise for this song. Much like most of the songs on this album, they pretty much sound the same.
This is a rare piece of Ozzy history, and even if, like No Rest for the Wicked, its very "filler" and the tracks meld together a lot, it's still worth at least one listen. Die-hard Ozzy-fans should get it, at the very least, it is a collector's item for those of us who are fanatics of the Prince of Darkness.
2011-03-25 03:50:44
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