Epic

I get kind of maddened whenever Ozzy Osbourne manages to scrape out another studio album. Regardless of the quality of the album (which tends to be pretty low given his output in the last two decades), the fanboy lemmings always crawl out of the woodwork, hailing the album as a great return and that the man still has "it". No, he does not have "it". In fact, I'd argue that he never did have "it", instead surrounding himself with excellent songwriters and stealing all of the credit. Anyway, all of that can be discussed on another day, for now we have an album called Scream to deal with.
The album actually starts out decently enough. Let It Die reminds me of an Ozzmosis song. Bear in mind that Ozzmosis wasn't a good album by any means. Let Me Hear You Scream is the first single and it's pretty shallow in terms of well thought out ideas. It's an easy attempt at making a catchy song and I guess it succeeds at it. Soul Sucka is a heavy track that doesn't really do anything of note. Nice bass sound though. Life Won't Wait is the sort of power ballad that I've grown to really hate from Ozzy. Diggin' Me Down is easily the best track on the album. For once the band isn't going through the motions and they're trying to create something inventive. Next is Crucify, which you can skip. Fearless could be an audience favorite if it's ever played live. It has a nice chorus you can pump your fist to. Time is another shit ballad. Has Ozzy ever made a ballad that doesn't suck? I don't even like Goodbye To Romance. Anyway, moving on. I Want It More is another heavy chuggy track with a good chorus, it's among the better tracks here. Last two tracks are forgettable, though I l Love You All is just an outro.

The individual pieces of the band don't amount to much. Ozzy is obviously autotuned out of the ass. Gus G. plays a lot like Zakk Wylde. I really don't get why Ozzy was so adament about replacing Zakk when he makes his replacement play in the same way. You barely get 15 seconds into the album before you hear the first guitar squeal. Granted the squealing is mostly kept under control and not of the plague-infected proportions as before. I don't even know who does the bass and the drums. Rick Wakeman's kid plays the keyboards. Nice gig you have there, hopefully it's a fulfilling use of your talent.

I guess you can argue that this is a better album than Black Rain, but when a kick to the junk is a preferable experience to listening to Black Rain, it's kind of a meaningless statement.


01. Let It Die
02. Let Me Hear You Scream
03. Soul Sucka
04. Life Won't Wait
05. Diggin' Me Down
06. Crucify
07. Fearless
08. Time
09. I Want It More
10. Latimer's Mercy
11. I Love You All

score: 5/10