I’ll be honest here. Upon first hearing Ozzy was recording a new album, I thought to myself, "Why?" Looking at this guy stumbling and mumbling around all half aware on The Osbournes gives the impression that merely sitting in a chair is not the easiest of tasks for the Prince of Darkness-turned -crusty, lovable reality TV reality dad.

Shit, I'd be impressed if he just built an Ikea cabinet by himself… But here he is, recording as well as writing a significant chunk of the music on Scream, his new mildly dexterous album that could find suitable comfort nestled between amidst the tones of his Ozzfest-ian brethren.

Scream finds Ozzy and his now Zack Wylde-less band hovering in a perplexing space between NASA-grade vacuums of radio-ready, "safe" metal and stoney, Sabbath-era sludge pulling from each end. It’s just hard to tell if these dabs of unabashed, sludgy tendencies are more bone throwing to the metal purists or a legitimate exercise in leg stretching (or retrograding?) by the Ozz-man himself.

You'd be hard-pressed not to think the latter from an initial listen to opening track, “Let it Die.” The preliminary riff jabs with the muscle of modern-era metalists like Mastodon, its heat giving off a desert-like vibe akin to guys like Queens of the Stone Age — until it meanders into a verse and chorus that's such a caricature of metal it’s laughable.

Laughable is a pesky descriptor that rears its head in a number of moments on Scream, most notably in “Soul Sucka.” Yes, you read "soul sucka." The track is so amazingly terrible, I’m still trying to wrap my head around it after almost a week of listening to this thing. I mean, how did it come to fruition? Did Ozzy dress up as a rapper on Halloween and get really inspired by the rap name he told everyone to call him? Were Three 6 Mafia lingering in the background like ghost producers? I wish I knew. I think everyone does.

This article appears in Jun 24-30, 2010.