Ozzy Osbourne
Down To Earth (Epic)
by Martin Popoff
Damn. Hard to believe in this world of palm-greased compromises, but big-bearded Zakk actually got his way, or at least his wish, “way” being an impossibly loaded term in the tense political world that is the extended Ozzy think tank.
Ozzy made a heavy record. A vicious record. A complicated yet hard-ass yet regal record, one befitting his classic rock stature, one consisting of ten songs (plus one pensive singer-songbirdy interlude called “You Know”), only, ONLY two of them ballads. Let’s deal with those first shall we? First of all, this is a great album, and I’m a happy rock’n’roller as I write this.
So yeah, that second ballad. It’s called “Running Out of Time” and it’s blessed with a less than obvious Beatles melody which unfolds into Pink Floyd tricks and a chorus that is, well, average but not harmfully so. And it’s a great arrangement, accessible and warmly-layered, lots of parts and pieces. Recline now with me into the rest of this weighty tome, this alternately doomy, bluesy, proggy, dark, deliciously hooky piece of bass-throbbed consortium-created craftsmanship.
Down To Earth is heavy and smart, beginning with the sassy groove of “Facing Hell” (spot the “Megalomania” vocal lines), once more Ozzy’s vocal melodies becoming songs all on their own, against tortured, sobbing guitars that accumulate throughout the record to create a curiously stealth-like, not so intrusive or overbearing sort of commercial doom rock. I mean, there were all these rumors of nü metal influences, and if there’s even a trace of that, it might be in the fact that many of today’s tattooed millionaires play a sort of low, grinding, swirling thing derived from Sabbath.
But Ozzy owns this through that source, not to mention his ’90s albums. So he’s tricked us and merely stated a case, proposed through No More Tears and Ozzmosis, that Ozzy’s found his heavy sound. So “No Easy Way Out” rolls with this heft, as well as filling up with tips and tricks, breaks, offshoots, plus a few obscure Sabbath melodies.
Finally, where you were sure, SURE, you’d be handed another “Ozzy doing a bit of gardening” ballad, the record slams the door with “Can You Hear Them” an old school metaller – sinister, stacked, aristocratic, both dark as coal and somehow a bit power-metallish. Brilliant, happening, never dull. So wot’s that? Best Ozzy album of the ’90s, hands down, and before that, well… it’s just an impossible tangle of emotions, memories, nostalgias, that measurement is futile. Once again, inspiring congratulations on this record’s purity of rock’n’metal purpose, its deliberate challenge to its audience, its respect for the intelligence of an audience that frankly, in full composite at least, doesn’t deserve it.