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Black Rain
The album was co-produced by Ozzy and Kevin Churko, Ozzy's band is Zakk Wylde (guitar), Mike Bordin (drums) and Blasko (bass). Ozzy will support the album with a global tour beginning May 27 and then in July he'll headline the 12th annual Ozzfest tour throughout America.
RRP: £16.99
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Editorial
Album Description
BLACK RAIN marks Ozzy's first album with new studio material in six years. It finds him as vital, creative and evocative as ever.
Signs Of Life
Review date: 2008-06-22 Rating: 8 out of 10
This is not one of those Ozzy albums which will amaze the listener, but it does provide more than a little evidence that Ozzy can still rock. Ozzy also shows that he isn't afraid to update his sound a bit, as there is some experimentation here with industrial metal, though for my tastes I would have preferred that he did more of that instead of falling back to his older sound on some of the pieces.
The opening piece is "Not Going Away" which appears to be a biographical
statement about Ozzy not retiring. It is a solid piece and is one of the pieces on which he experiments with his sound, but ultimately it fails to grab the listener, and it did not grow on me with repeated listenings. Next up is "I Don't Wanna Stop", which is a similar lyrical message, but a stronger piece, with some great instrumentation. However, when one compares this to some of Ozzy's greatest pieces it just doesn't match up. Next up is the title track, "Black Rain", a piece which Ozzy questions the purpose of the war. For me this is the strongest of the tracks, though it too would not be considered in the top tier of all Ozzy's songs.
The ballads are the weakness of this album, as unfortunately it has been a long time since Ozzy has done any ballad which didn't sound like one he has done before. The first one is "Lay Your World On Me". It sounds like any number of previous efforts, and lyrically is probably weaker than most. Up next is "The Almighty Dollar", once again a slightly different sound, but this one just doesn't work for me. It isn't bad, and it does have some interesting sections, but it just doesn't hold up as a complete piece. "11 Silver" is a high energy effort, but as with its predecessor it ends up around an average piece because it doesn't all fit together, though there is a furious guitar solo which perhaps moves it slightly above average. "Civilize The Universe" is a bit better to my ears, and it is one of the highlights of the album.
"Here for You" is the second ballad, and as with the first one, it is one of the weaker tracks. Ozzy should consider doing an album or two without ballads, unless he can really come up with something different. "Countdown's Begun" is a more traditional sounding heavier Ozzy song, though it seems to signal that the inventiveness of the sound on the earlier tracks as run out. As an Ozzy piece, I found it rather unexceptional, though preferable to the ballads. The last piece on the regular CD is "Trap Door", which is another of the better pieces on the album, though the lyrics are too repetitive for me, it at least offers a pretty good jam.
The Japanese release contains two bonus tracks, the first of which is "I Can't Save You" This sounds more like an older Ozzy piece, but it has a decent sound so of the more traditional Ozzy sounding pieces on this album, it would have been my favorite, were it not for the second bonus track "Nightmare", which once again doesn't fit as much with the industrial metal sound of a lot of this album, but is the best of the traditional Ozzy pieces included.
In terms of composition, this album is essentially a three person effort. Ozzy, Zakk Wylde, and Kevin Churko composed all the pieces, with the exception of "The Almighty Dollar" and "Trap Door" for which Zakk is not credited as composer. The musicians are Ozzy Osbourne (vocals), Zakk Wylde (guitars and keyboards), Mike Bordin (drums and percussion), and Blasko (bass). Though it is a bit inconsistent, I am rounding this one up to four stars.
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Reviews
Brilliant album. It was let down by the 2 boring ballads.
Review date: 2008-06-07 Rating: 8 out of 10
This is a bloody brilliant metal album it's got heavy riffs, great solos by Zakk, good enough lyric & excellent vocals which to be is what you'd excpect from a metal album. Yes the album is ruined by ozzy's god awful ballads and when you're listening to them you just know he's singing about sharon so it makes you want take off your ears, but dont worry this album is packed with 8 great metal songs, the best being I Don't Wanna Stop, Black Rain, 11 Silver & Countdowns Begun all fantastic metal songs which no metal fan should hate. This is the only album i have from Ozzy's solo career but i have to album from The Ozzy Sabbath era, and i must say this is awesome. If you're an Ozzy fan Black Sabbath fab buy this album ignore the 2 ballads (Lay your world on me & Here For You) and listen to some great metal. Rock On Brothers. The Metal Real.
Great Album
Review date: 2008-04-05 Rating: 8 out of 10
Finally Ozzy has relesed an new album!!!! It's been 6 years since we've heard new material from the Prince of Darkness. And I cannot say he has dissapointed anyone. This is a great ablum. Good Lyrics, Good Guitar Riffs, What more could you ask for??????
Awesome album
Review date: 2008-03-08 Rating: 10 out of 10
Black Rain! What can we say? Well this album really is absolutely awesome, Ozzy just gets better and better.
We haven't stopped listening to it since we bought it from Amazon.
Buy it, it's pure brilliance, Ozzy is definately 'Not Going Away'
I LIKE THIS A LOT
Review date: 2007-10-31 Rating: 8 out of 10
To a certain extent, Ozzy Osbourne doesn't need to make new music -- and to a certain extent he hasn't, choosing to not record an album of original material in the years immediately after the reality TV show The Osbournes once again turned him into a household name. At the peak of Ozzy's fame in the early '80s, he was a boogeyman, embodying all the dangers of rock & roll, but the TV show made him safe, even cuddly -- a punch line at the White House Foreign Correspondent's Dinner -- which just helped him rake in the money, particularly since in addition to riding the wave of The Osbournes, his annual OzzFest tour turned into an institution of sorts, helping launch new bands while tending to his metal credibility. Now, that is a rock & roll machine, one driven entirely by personality, not new musical product, and one that was nearly in perpetual motion, never needing new grist for the mill to turn a profit. Yet there's always a risk that an enterprise like that could grow a bit stale, even with the occasional box sets, live albums, and cover records to keep things humming. And so, Ozzy finally got around to a new album original material, releasing Black Rain in the summer of 2007, a full six years after Down to Earth, his last album of originals, and well past the sell-by date of his TV show -- proof that this record isn't about cashing-in, it's about keeping the Osbourne machine rolling.
Black Rain was released just a year and half before Ozzy's 60th birthday, and he does sound like a veteran -- he can't wail like he used to, opting for a lower-register growl, but perhaps the biggest indication that he's getting on in years is that he doesn't rock as hard as he once did. Sure, longtime axeman Zakk Wylde is here playing some mean guitar, but this isn't as heavy as he was even a decade ago, lacking both the gut-level punch and monster riffs of even his post-Randy Rhoads work. Certainly, this level of heaviosity is missed, but it's also true that if Ozzy really strived for a brutal attack he might wind up sounding older than he already does here, so hearing him ease into a hazily dark, vaguely psychedelic heavy rock as reminiscent of Lennon as it is of Sabbath is oddly appropriate. Nothing on Black Rain could really qualify as an Osbourne classic, but there's something curiously comforting about Ozzy relaxing a little bit and singing songs that are strangely age-appropriate -- something that's not respectable, necessarily, something that is still metal, but something that isn't quite as heavy as before, yet retaining that swirling, circular melodies and murky grind that has been his stock and trade for nearly 40 years. If the music feels a bit older, so do Ozzy's lyrics. He spends a startling amount of time addressing the ills of the world, ranging from terrorism to consumerism, and for once his fondness for gloomy doomsday imagery jibes with the conventional-held opinion of the state of the world (although he never gets as apocalyptic as Cormac McCarthy's The Road, or the Left Behind series, for that matter, which frankly is a relief). This unintentional zeitgeist piggybacking helps Black Rain feel timely and appropriate, which is a mildly shocking turn of events, and helps the album feel something closer to a work of art than a piece of product for the Ozz machine. It's hardly a perfect record -- producer Kevin Churko, who engineered Osbourne's Under Cover and also produced Cheap Trick's 2006 Rockford, has a long history of pop editing and engineering, including credits on Britney's Oops!...I Did It Again, Shania Twain's Up!, and Celine Dion's New Day Has Come, and all that history is evident in the album's slightly too punchy and precise sound. But even if Black Rain is a bit clean, a bit soft in the center, it's far from an embarrassment, and it's surprisingly likeable -- kind of like Ozzy himself in the new millennium, really, so it's nice that he finally has an album that lives up to his well-scrubbed, reputable persona.
Product Details/Specifications
Artist(s):
Ozzy Osbourne
Recording label: SonyBMG
Manufacturer: SonyBMG
EAN: 0886971018929
Binding: Audio CD
Format: Enhanced,
Release date: 2007-05-21
Universal product code (UPC): 886971018929
Number of discs: 1
Disc 1 Tracks:
1. Not going Away
2. I Don't Wanna Stop
3. Black Rain
4. Lay Your World On Me
5. God Bless The Almighty Dollar
6. 11 Silver
7. Civilize The Universe
8. Here For You
9. Countdown's begun
10. Trap Door
Publishers: SonyBMG