Speak of the Devil

Greetings MetalMortal,
Welcome to the first advice/recommendation blog entry on Tommy Knocker's Heavy Metal Cavern. I am Tommy Knocker, the spirit host of this blog. Many of the views on this blog will be shared by many loyal metal fans and some will be "lone ranger" ideas from my dead skull. I will leave it up to you to decide which views are which my MetalMortal friend.

Now to the first order of business, Ozzy Osbourne's Speak of the Devil album. For the uninitiated, an abbreviated history lesson. Speak of the Devil was recorded at The Ritz in New York City on September 26th and 27th of 1982. Playing with Ozzy on this album were none other than Brad Gillis (guitar), Rudy Sarzo (bass) and Tommy Aldridge (drums). This was the first album that Ozzy released after the death of his former guitarist Randy Rhoads on March 19, 1982. The live recordings on Ozzy's Tribute album were originally intended to be Ozzy's first live album, but due to Rhoads death, Ozzy decided to record and release an album containing only Black Sabbath songs instead.





I won't bore you by listing all the song titles and informing you of the length of each song. However, I will tell you that Speak of the Devil is one of the very best live metal albums of all time. All of the songs on the album are Black Sabbath songs, but they are performed in a much different way than they were originally recorded with Black Sabbath in the 1970s. Brad Gillis pumps new life and energy into Tony Iommi's masterpieces. If you haven't heard this album, you will be shocked at how different these songs sound. In particular, the opening song, Symptom of the Universe sounds incredible and is a much more powerful song than the version that Black Sabbath recorded on Sabotage. The Wizard track is also a classic performance, from Ozzy's harmonica to Gillis' extra tweaks on the guitar. Ozzy also does an awesome job of interacting with the crowd throughout the set. They took the stage, hit the record button and banged out some beautiful versions of these songs. The fact that they didn't rework the recordings to death in the studio made this album raw and real, but it still sounds awesome (too bad the same can't be said for a lot of live albums).

Speak of the Devil is an album that people seem to absolutely love or absolutely hate. A lot of "expert" critics crap all over this album and Ozzy himself doesn't rank it as one of his best works. Well, we know that Ozzy is crazy so you can discount his opinion (for the record, I got nuthin' but love for the OzzMan, I am a HUGE fan). And I could give a damn what any pin-dicked expert thinks of any album (or book or movie for that matter). Have a listen and let me know what YOU think.
Farewell MetalMortal,
Tommy Knocker