Against all odds,
Ozzy Osbourne's 2020s output has been as strong if not stronger than the vast majority of his multi-decade discography. His 12th studio solo album, 2020's
Ordinary Man, sounded rejuvenated and inspired, with its moments of hard-hitting,
Sabbath-echoing greatness far outnumbering its few by-the-numbers clunkers.
Ozzy hadn't turned in a studio LP for ten years before
Ordinary Man, but his 13th album,
Patient Number 9, arrives just two relatively short years after its predecessor and carries a similar crackle of reactivated excitement. Part of what keeps things lively is the all-star cast of guest guitarists that show up on almost every track.
Eric Clapton,
Jeff Beck, and
Pearl Jam's
Mike McCready all contribute lead parts and solos to various songs, but some of the record's best moments come when
Ozzy reunites with guitar heroes from his past.
Zakk Wylde plays on tracks like the tense downtempo groover "Evil Shuffle" and the
Beatles-informed angst ballad "Nothing Feels Right," a song that imagines a world where
Ozzy sang in
Soundgarden circa "Black Hole Sun." Perhaps most substantially,
Black Sabbath's own
Tony Iommi makes appearances on multiple songs, marking the first time he has played on one of
Osbourne's solo albums.
Ordinary Man tapped into a distinctively
Sabbath-esque intensity at times, and adding
Iommi's menacing shredding to already
Sabbath-modeled tunes further highlights the similarities. His churning blues-metal riffing (along with the haunted harmonica) on "Degradation Rules" takes notes from various
Sabbath moments, and "No Escape from Now" applies the exact spaced-out vocal effect that made "Planet Caravan" such a surreal trip.
Ozzy's sound has always included a fine-tuned balance of powerhouse riffing and hooks derived from the more sinister reaches of pop, and that formula continues here. Rather than the fairly straightforward arrangements of
Ordinary Man, however,
Patient Number 9 gets into more involved song structures and riskier production moves. The seven-plus-minute title track kicks off the set, sounding at first like a standard
Ozzy fantasy about being trapped in a corrupt asylum, but quickly branching out into extended soloing from
Jeff Beck, a psychedelic breakdown midway through the song, and most unexpectedly a lengthy prog-flavored outro. There's also a fairly blatant use of Auto-Tune on the vocals of several songs, adding to the album's surreal sheen. While confusion and depravity have been favorite topics for
Ozzy since 1969, he links these familiar emotions to themes of mortality and time running out throughout
Patient Number 9. It makes sense that
Osbourne would be writing with his eyes on the clock after a half-century run that included years of very public substance abuse issues and, as life went on, serious health struggles. Even with that fatalistic perspective sometimes peeking through,
Ozzy sounds hypercharged throughout
Patient Number 9, continuing the unlikely late-in-the-game comeback he began on
Ordinary Man, and besting that album by taking more chances. ~ Fred Thomas
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