The End (Or The Oz Is Dead, Long Live The Oz)

As usual, just an hour or so after I put up a new post, news drops that another rock'n'roll legend has died. I didn't keep tabs on Ozzy Osbourne and his health, but from what I read about concerts, the Ozzster was doing them sitting down and cutting down on his concert length, because his health and stamina wouldn't allow for more. For his last ever show, Back To The Beginning (now unofficially known as The End, For Real This Time) about two weks ago, he sat on a black throne throughout, and the reunited Black Sabbath Mark 1 struggled to get through a short four song set, after a six song Ozzy solo set, and a ton of supporting acts, including Slayer, Pantera, Guns'n'Roses and Metallica. But all that doesn't matter. Ozzy got to go out the way he deserved to: on a big fuckin' stage, in front of a whole load of people. 

I can't in all honesty claim to be a huge Ozzy or Black Sabbath fan, I'm more of a 'Sabbath's first two albums and an Ozzy Greatest Hits package will do' kind of guy. Even though I always forget what a great tune "Crazy Train" is, until it comes on. But a post for and with the Oz feels appropriate, and it also gives me an excuse to get some crunchy rock'n'roll on this here blog, where in the last weeks we have been mostly acoustic and well-behaved. Well, enough of that for a second. Let's have Ozzy, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler throw down some heavy shit, shall we?

So today's very humble One Buck Record Of The Day is an EP, or strictly speaking half an EP. In 2016, to celebrate their The End tour - the last ever Black Sabbath live tour - they sold The End at concerts, an EP (actually, more like a double EP, or simply an album, at fifty-five minutes of length, which does indeed make it longer than 13 itself). The first half were Rick Rubin-produced outtakes from their 13 album, whereas the second half were live tracks. Those were strictIy of the o.k.-ish variety, so I only kept the studio tracks, which were surprisingly good for what are essentially outtakes and deserved to get a proper release either way. 

Rage Against The Machine's Brad Wilk is manning the drum set here for these four songs. "Season Of The Dead" opens with one of Iommi's doomiest riffs, before the vocals kick in, only to open up a machine gun fire of different riffs in the middle. As Ozzy said, when talking about the original sessions for 13 which started a mere 12 years (!) earlier: "Tony was still firing off these amazing heavy metal riffs. He just goes 'here you go' and comes out with one better than you've ever heard in your life. ". "Cry All Night has a neat little blues solo in the middle. "Take Me Home" bring sout more heavt riffage, while "Isolated Man" brings some distorted psychedelia into the mix. 

Speaking of the mix, this was one of the major criticisms of 13 and Rubin especially, with its extremely high loudness levels and high compression. You can hear this also on the four The End tracks, and while it's not a dealbreaker, it does position The End towards the tail end of the Loudness wars (ca. 2005-2015 I'd say). Still, this is probably as good as any latter-day veteran version of Black Sabbath was going to sound. Finally, The End - tour or EP - wasn't, as said above, the end. The end was the way back to beginning, just days before the real end for Ozzy. But The End does stand as a nice reminder of what Sabbath and consequently Oz were all about. Let it rip. 

R.I.P. John Michael "Ozzy" Osbourne (1948-2025)

P.S.: Still on holidays here, folks, with a crap laptop (NEVER buy a Linux-based computer, folks!), so for once there is no artwork attached to the tracks...