Ozzy Osbourne & Halford @ Save-On-Foods Memorial

The night started with the entrance of the Metal God and his band Halford. From note one the band was on fire and Rob's vocal was pitch perfect. He slayed with selections from the current Halford album Made Of Metal. He played the title track, Fire & Ice, Thunder & Lightning to name a few from the album and each one sounded amazing and fresh. The classic Green Manalishi along with Diamonds & Rust were included in set which both sounded tight. Rob reached back into the 90's for a ripping rendition of Nailed To The Gun which nearly brought a tear to my eye. I sang loudly along just as I did when the band blasted through the nights amazing opening number Resurrection and the wickedly good Made In Hell which quickly followed. Overall the Halford set was bloody awesome and Mike Chlasciak was easily the best guitarist to set foot on stage all night.

Ozzy appeared with no introduction after a long winded video intro of nonsense. The concert started with Bark At The Moon and it was a good live version but then the played out set jumped around the first two solo albums and a few classics from his Black Sabbath days. I am one of the few who can't stand most of the first two solo records and I'm so damn bored of songs like Crazy Train, Suicide Solution & War Pigs. The absolutely terrible guitar solo performance by Gus G would have been a good time to take a nap. The guy can play but he has nothing special going on and I wasn't impressed with his skill set at all during the solo section.

Not to mention Gus G couldn't shine on stage setting his fretboard a fire with flashy fingering all he could do was play passable covers of songs written by much more skilled and better players outside of Randy Rhodes who I find completely overrated. After seeing Ozzy with Jake E. Lee and Zakk Wylde who played on his two best albums Bark At The Moon and the golden masterpiece No Rest For The Wicked can't be touched by the G-man.

Ozzy ran through all the crap he's been playing live for years ignoring all but his single Let Me Hear You Scream from the 2010 album. This was very disappointing because I'd have liked to hear some new songs instead of tired versions that we've heard a million times. The complete absence of Down To Earth and Black Rain stuff not to mention No Rest really killed the Osbourne set and how fresh and exciting it could have truly been. After stealing two of Rob Zombie's band members adding them to his couldn't save this from just being a run of the mill cover band.

To be honest I would have prefered to have not heard any Sabbath tunes and him concentrate on the last 5 of 6 albums of material to bring to life a setlist more fitting of the times. The lack of songs like "Miracle Man", "No More Tears", "Perry Mason", "Thunder Underground", "Gets Me Through" "That I Never Had", "I Just Want You", "Not Going Away", "I Don't Wanna Stop", "Soul Sucker" and "Fearless" are almost shameful because all of those tunes are in keys he can hit without stressing his voice to cracking. The audience would have loved to hear those songs performed with great delight and his band could have actually played music more akin to their tastes and own styles instead of rehashing the over played and now boring tunes of yesteryear.