Epic 黑胶唱片和CD

Review: "I'll never die, because I'm immortal," Ozzy Osbourne makes clear on Patient 9's opening track, 'Immortal'. Far from a throwaway line, in music terms it does often feel like the Prince of Darkness is less a man and more an omnipresent force that has been here since the beginning of time, or at least metal, and will likely somehow still be releasing records when we're rotting the ground like the corpses on an album cover.
Of course, he's not, but in a decade-spanning career, Osbourne has reached heights some can only imagine. At least some of that experience is distilled onto Patient Number 9, an album that is more a celebration of camaraderie and bonds established over time than anything else. Collaborations with some of the all-time guitar-wielding greats (Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and - most pleasingly - fellow Black Sabbath co-founder and all-round legend Tony Iommi) come thick and, in most cases, fast, fenders squealing and rhythm guitars threatening to run away into that cursed night.

Review: Give Way has all the hallmarks of a collector's item. Originally intended to be given away for free with copies of Pear Jam's 1998 documentary, Single Video Theory, neither label nor band cleared the promotion and so it all went down the drain, with 50,000 copies destroyed a day before the flick hit in one of those How Much Money Did They Have? kind of moments.
25 years on and fans can finally see what they've been missing out on. The record itself is a snapshot of a date at Melbourne Park in Australia, a stop off on the Yield Tour, cutting down the original 25 track show to a shorter playlist, ensuring it can fit on the release. In terms of standards, this gives a strong nod to a peak period in the legacy of this US grunge rock behemoth, and should appease even the most demanding fans.