Prince of darkness, junkie and soap clown: Ozzy Osbourne’s image shimmers. With the band Black Sabbath he transformed blues into hard rock and founded an entire genre. Later he became an icon as a solo artist, ended up in the drug swamp several times and always fought back. His new album shows that he is still a serious musician today. “Patient Number 9” sounds like a blues metal overview and plays with Osbourne’s image between genius and madness, as he himself sings: “Don’t forget me, even when I do”.
His 13th solo album is a lavish production with many guest stars and could be his last album; the 73-year-old announced the final tour. Which starts with a crazy psychiatric laugh – “Is there a way out of here?” -, develops into a kind of musical legacy: “Patient Number 9” contains everything that makes Osbourne’s music.
The intro from the institution becomes polyphonic, an e-piano replaces plastic-pop guitars. The drums drum lightly. Soft hard rock sounds, which is sophisticated, but also sounds pleasing with a penchant for bombast. Osbourne’s signature vocals spiral upwards. A sprawling solo turns into a beautiful purring guitar in “Immortal”, which breaks with the epic opener in a crisp brevity and leads into the third song “Parasite”. It rolls along dominated by the drum. The next piece, which turns out to be the intro for the retro-heavy “No Escape from Now”, almost takes us into the ballad-like.
You can go through the entire disc like this. It’s a hit album with a string of polished pearls that sound routine and sometimes surprise. Osbourne doesn’t reinvent himself, justifiably trusts in his skills without going after a trick. He even manages to link back to Black Sabbath with a doomy “Evil Shuffle”. Everything is mixed perfectly, but one would have wished for such rollers to be dirtier, rougher. But then it wouldn’t be Ozzy Osbourne music anymore. The album ends with harmonica and banjo with “Darkside Blues”, the Prince of Darkness, who once escaped from the blues, returns to the blues.
Our annual charts were put together by the music critics of the “Freie Presse”. You can find all previous placements HERE.
www.freiepresse.de/alben22