This came out in 2001 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
“I’m not the kind of person you think I am,” claims Ozzy Osbourne on his new single Gets Me Through. “I’m not the anti-Christ or the Iron Man.” I beg to differ with that last part.
Three decades after raising hell with Black Sabbath, Ozzy is one of the few old-school heavy-metal torchbearers who hasn’t burned out. The long-awaited Down to Earth, his first CD in six years, is yet another headbangers’ ball of power-mad Zakk Wylde guitar riffs, thunderously plodding dinosaur-stomp beats and Ozzy’s endearingly bleated vocals about hell and death and addiction and, well, the usual stuff that makes up Ozzy’s world. For my money, there are a few too many power ballads and not enough flat-out rockers in the mix — too many No More Tears and not enough Crazy Train, as it were. Still, at this stage of the game, if Ozzy isn’t metal’s Iron Man, who is?
