It's hard to tell that this is a mildly progressive album, but it is. Two of the eleven tracks are "Miracle Man," which slam television evangelist Jim Bakker, who left TV for 16 years after an adultery scandal and five year prison term. Ozzy is consistently critical of scamming Christianity; although, he may be some kind of Christian himself.
He also has a song about what could refer to his own struggle with alcohol "Demon Alcohol" and another song about Vietnam and the aftermath for veterans in "Bloodbath in Paradise."
This album stays consistent with the Ozzy Osbourne sound even with a new guitarist. However, old Black Sabbath hits "War Pigs" and "Iron Man" are more essential.
"No More Tears"
Sony, 1995
In his old age, after years of living on the heavy metal fringe of making big money but not much respectability, Ozzy Osbourne is suddenly huge. He has his own TV series about his family's daily life.
For most of his career he was with "Black Sabbath," good heavy metal music of a very moody sort, good to contemplate suicide by. Such songs continue in "No More Tears." The appeal of Ozzy was with emotional youth, not youth wanting syrupy love songs, but rather hard-edged and relatively fast music.
Dwelling on failure in life, Ozzy opens this album with a song on a child molester. The anger and criticism aimed at a child molester is apt for Ozzy's style of music. Unfortunately, there will be those who do not see it that way and take Ozzy's song as glorification of child molesting--namely the stupid will take it that way. Nonetheless, it's pointless to fault the stupid, so we have to fault Ozzy for this song.
The second song is also of borderline use. It's a hardened cynical song titled "I don't want to change the world." The refrain is "I don't want the world to change me." The good part of the song is its sneering at Christians who try to tell him he is a sinner. "I spoke to God this morning and he don't like you."
The rest of the songs are typical Ozzy escapist songs with even less to discuss of social reality. The more failure in life to escape, the more heavy metal chords to play. Unlike some music that is literally empty, Ozzy's music is not empty. It's also well-done.
Advance to society without romance culture problems and this sort of music will disappear. Give youth a more interesting education that they feel more in control of and a lot of the escapist popularity of this sort of music will disappear. These powerful emotions do not come from no where. That's not to say there is not power to this form of music: there is. Some day we hope to see it tapped for other causes. In the Black Sabbath past, Ozzy did his best work against the Vietnam War, using the power and potential anger of his form toward a good end.
The reviewer admits to liking this album quite a bit. It's an example of what MIM has called subjectivism. On the one hand, the reviewer likes the album, but on the other hand, the reviewer knows there's nothing redeeming about it and that Ozzy's talents could have been applied elsewhere.