No. 10. OZZY OSBOURNE – PATIENT NUMBER 9: Who’d have thought that an Ozzy Osbourne record would ever crack my Top 10 again? This one really kind of hit home for me despite some questionable production choices. The title track with Jeff Beck is the best thing that the Prince of Bleeping Darkness has done in ages, and there’s plenty more to like here with guest shots from Tony Iommi, Eric Clapton, Zakk Wylde and Mike McCready. Though it doesn’t quite capture the classic Ozzy energy, there are certainly shades of all of his incarnations to be found in the songs here, and it’s probably the first Ozzy album that I’ve truly enjoyed since 2001’s Down to Earth. (And yeah, I know most people dislike that one, too, but I don’t.)
Standout songs: “Patient Number 9,” “Immortal,” “No Escape from Now,” “One of those Days,” “A Thousand Shades,” “Evil Shuffle,” “Mr. Darkness”
Today, we continue with the next 10 entrants on my list of favorite albums of the last decade...
GLORYHAMMER – SPACE 1992: RISE OF THE CHAOS WIZARDS (2015): Yes, this is Christopher Bowes’ second inclusion on this list, but it’s a different band and just as much fun. Instead of pirates, we’re focusing on heroic fantasy and science fiction. The next chapter of Bowes’ tale about Scottish hero Angus McFife takes us to space in the “far future” of 1992, where Angus McFife XIII battles the evil wizard Zargothrax, released from the ice prison where the hero’s ancient ancestor had locked him. The story was a bit looser than the band’s debut, 2012’s Tales from the Kingdom of Fife, but the music had matured by leaps and bounds. It was a tough call between this one and 2019’s Legends from Beyond the Galactic Terrorvortex, but in the end, I think the songs here are stronger overall – and there’s “Goblin King of the Darkstorm Galaxy.” If I’m most thankful for one thing musically in the last decade, it’s Bowes and the joy he’s brought me with both of his primary projects.
There’s a contingent of metal fans who think the music should always be uber-serious and without any trace of humor. I don’t agree with those folks, and really never have, but I do get it. Many of us were drawn to metal from places of anger, pain or isolation, and we found solace in knowing that there were others feeling the same things.
As I’ve gotten older, I have gained a much greater appreciation for things that just make me happy. There’s enough going on in the world to validate my anger and sadness these days, and more often than not when I turn to music, I want to get away from that.
When Kirk Hammett and Rob Trujillo were getting bashed mercilessly by some fans this year for taking a couple of minutes of each Metallica show to have some goofy fun by performing absolutely awful covers of songs that had some significance to the town they were playing, I was watching the YouTube videos and laughing along with them. I was happy to see them having fun and not taking things too seriously.
For the same reason, Nanowar of Steel’s completely ridiculous IKEA-ad Christmas tune “Valhallelujah” sits right next to Parkway Drive’s “Wishing Wells,” a violent and raging tale of coping with grief, on my list of Best of 2019 list. (And, yes, I know the Parkway Drive song wasn’t actually released in 2019, but more on that later).
So, if there’s a theme to my list of favorite albums of the past year, you’ll see that it’s not necessarily complex and serious musicianship that won me over in 2019, but rather the ability to make me smile and take me to another place for a few minutes.
BEST OF 2019 NOT RELEASED IN 2019
PARKWAY DRIVE – REVERENCE: I was a fan of the early wave of metalcore in the late ’90s and early ‘00s with bands like Shadows Fall and God Forbid, but the style quickly got stale for me. These days, I tend to discount most anything tagged with the label automatically, so Parkway Drive was not on my radar until late January. We were listening to Sirius/XM on our four-hour drive back from a concert in Dallas that had been my son’s Christmas gift when I heard “The Void” on Octane (his channel of choice). I thought it was kind of cool with a Metallica vibe. A couple of hours later, they played “Wishing Wells” on Liquid Metal, and the song just punched me in the gut. When I got home, I grabbed Reverence, and it remained a staple of my listening all year. It has the perfect balance of raging heaviness mixed with memorable melodies and riffs that just does it for me. It’s one of my most listened records this year, and if I had heard it when it was released in 2018, it would have easily been a Top 5 pick.
