Prince of Darkness [Box set]

Ozzy Osbourne | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 22, 2005)
• Number of Discs: 4
• Format: Box set
• Note on Boxed Sets: During shipping, discs in boxed sets occasionally become dislodged without damage. Please examine and play these discs. If you are not completely satisfied, we'll refund or replace your purchase.
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B0007OTWR6
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (82 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #70,326 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Not entirely a career retrospective and decidedly not a vault raid that reveals the junk in the trunk, this four-disc collection chronicles Ozzy’s hot-burnt and all-too-brief Blizzard Of Ozz and Diary Of A Madman post-Black Sabbath era with Randy Rhoads and also the long road the Ozzman traveled in search of a guitarist that could ever come close to matching his late friend’s creative spark. Listening to material from albums such as Bark At The Moon and The Ultimate Sin reveals that even when Osbourne wasn’t flying all that high musically he did keep evolving and, in the often risk averse world of heavy metal, he often took chances that could have potentially alienated core fans ("Thank God For The Bomb" reveals that Ozzy may care about the planet but he doesn’t possess the same knack for politics as Bob Dylan) but made them embrace him even more. He managed to hit another career high with guitarist Zakk Wylde and the No More Tears album which provides some of the second disc’s finest moments. ("Mama I’m Coming Home" proves one of the underrated balladeer’s most poignant moments.) But the back end of this collection shines as much as its front with a disc that compiles various collaborative efforts, including a tussle with Miss Piggy on "Born To Be Wild" and a strange detour with Was (Not Was) on "Shake Your Head (Let’s Go To Bed)." The real gem is the fourth platter which finds Ozzy covering some of his favorite tunes from the past, including a moving and wholly accurate reading of John Lennon’s "Working Class Hero," a song that almost seems to have been written with Osbourne in mind. Ozzy may be the prince of darkness but he’s also the king of heavy metal and this set demonstrates, once more, exactly why. -- Jedd Beaudoin

Product Description

Limited Edition Four CD Box Set. CDs One and Two Feature Ozzy's Greatest Hits. CD Three is a Collection of Tracks with Collaborations from Other Artists, Including Primus, Therapy, was Not Was, Miss Piggy, Motorhead, and More. CD Four features Previously Unreleased Cover Songs by Ozzy, Including Tracks Originally Written by the Beatles, King Crimson, the Animals, and More. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Stick with Ozzy's 95' remasters and other studio work., March 10, 2006

By 

NFL Fanatic (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Prince of Darkness (Audio CD)

I am a longtime Ozzy and Black Sabbath fan, and I think we'll all agree that Ozzy is one of only a handful of musicians who brought heavy metal to us. I had been looking forward to the prospect of a box set from either of them, loaded with rarities and other gems that had been concealed. So when this came about I was excited about discovering its contents. But the Oz (and SHaron) left me quite disappointed with these 4 discs.

Firstly, the Blizzard of Ozz & Diary of a Madman tracks are those hideous butchered ones with the Bob Daisley bass and Lee Kerslake drumming re-recorded. Anyone who has closely followed Ozzy's career knows he had just been ousted from Black Sabbath, and was in career purgatory and fading fast before teaming up with the original BLIZZARD OF OZZ musicians. That band is very largely responsible for helping Ozzy get back into the game, and for Ozzy and Sharon to deny Daisley and Kerslake their well earned and deserved royalties by removing their work from those albums is TOTALLY reprehensible.

(Incidentally, the new recordings on those CD's sound like $h!+ and are disgraceful to both Ozzy's and Randy Rhoades legacies. Just read the majority of the reviews about them on the amazon.com website.)

As for the covers - well, Zakk Wylde is an incredible guitarist and his work is good to his credit. But the covers mostly sound like "fillers" for just that purpose. I also found the majority of the live recordings to be inferior to the studio versions (not to mention that most of that stuff is previously released material that is readily available. Why not release live stuff previously unreleased - especially the Rhoades and Lee years?).

And the rarities - I guess if you're a hardcore Ozzy fanatic, this might serve Ozzy completists who really want that stuff for their collection. I could not get into them much. If Ozzy and Sharon had really wanted to serve their fans well, give us all of the original B-sides of Ozzy's single releases in one collection - INCLUDING the Randy Rhoades years with Bob Daisley and Lee Kerslake on them.

It was good to see Ozzy with the original Black Sabbath on tour last summer. But releases of this hodgepodge collection of butchered songs and substandard covers is not a good sign of things to come with Ozzy's solo career. I generously gave this 2 stars in the event that the rarities and covers will generate some interest to longtime Ozzy completist fans, although I myself could not get into them. Check this out this boxset online first if possible and spend you money wisely.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ozzy's Cover Tunes Best Part of This Set, August 19, 2005

By 

Christopher C. Rydo (United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Prince of Darkness (Audio CD)

For starters, I really had to think long and hard about how many stars I was going to give this thing. "Prince of Darkness" is a four-CD box set, so I decided to look at it disc by disc. That being said, I agree to an extent with some of the critics that said this thing was just another rehash of the same old Ozzy greatest hits things that we've seen at least 3 other times over the last few years. On the other hand, some of the demo tracks of classic tunes included on this thing actually outshine the originals in my estimation, and the cover tune CD is worth the price of purchase alone.

For starters, Disc One has the same old stuff that you could find on any of Ozzy's live compilations, or on the "Ozzman Cometh" greatest hits CD..with one atrocious exception. The classics are there, like "Mr. Crowley" and "Crazy Train", but the bass and drum tracks have been re-recorded by Robert Trujillo and Mike Borodin, as part of Sharon's retribution against original musicians Lee Kerslake and Bob Daisley. I'm sorry; I love Sharon and respect a lot of her other decisions, but this is just plain childish. Not to mention, it sounds like crap! Paul McCartney and John Lennon hated each other in the end, but you never heard them re-recording each others parts on the classic Beatles records! Stupid. One redeeming feature of Disc One is the inclusion of "You're No Different", an oft-overlooked ballad from "Bark at the Moon". But then again, why only go "part way" and include only one rare track? I dunno... this CD by itself would get 2 stars; the only redeeming feature being the live versions of "Goodbye to Romance" and "Bark at the Moon".

Now, Disc 2 on the other hand is something else. On top of live versions of several tracks from the "Ultimate Sin" album(some people may have forgotten that Jake E. Lee was a halfway decent guitarist -- and I wish Ozzy would play "Secret Loser" again live!), there are several demo versions of Ozzy's well-known songs, like "I Don't Want to Change the World", "Desire", "S.I.N.", "Mama I'm Coming Home", and "See You on the Other Side". Believe it or not, these versions are actually BETTER than the originals. Without the slick production that occasionally hindered the raw emotional power of "No More Tears" and "Ozzmosis", these songs flat out kick, especially the last three I mentioned. Interestingly enough, this version of "See You on the Other Side" contains a saxophone...and this brings up an interesting point. If you've heard some of Ozzy's album outtakes and B-sides; songs like "The Liar" and "Aimee", you'd realize that he's a much more diverse musician and performer than many people give him credit for. It's just a shame more stuff like this hasn't made it on his albums. Also, the alternate version of "Facing Hell" from "Down to Earth", here entitled "Bang, Bang You're Dead!" steals the show. Lyrically, it's perhaps one of Ozzy's most provocative songs ever, and it even features a sample of the Riverside County District Attorney who prosecuted Ozzy in the "Suicide Solution" case...wow, Ozzy still has some major juice, as this track shows!

Disc 3 features some of the collaborations Ozzy has done over the years, which are interesting if not too compelling. It's Disc 4 that is worth the price of purchase alone. Here, Ozzy covers some of his favorite songs. "In my Life" absolutely gave me goose bumps. His version of the Beatles tune is absolutely haunting. His version of "All the Young Dudes" is good(although I think Bruce Dickinson did it better), but "Sympathy for the Devil" totally rocks. Think about it; this is a song tailor-made for Ozzy. Arthur Brown's "Fire" also provides a perfect match for Ozzy's sinister, theatrical presence, and "For What It's Worth" and "Good Times" are also quite good. The only thing that ruins this CD is it includes Kelly Osbourne's version of "Changes"...God, why ruin it? Ah, well...I just skip over it.

So that being said, the cover album and the demo CD are what redeem this otherwise average "Best Of" compilation. And they're really that good...that's why I gave this thing 4 stars instead of the lower rating I was tempted to. In closing, it's just a shame that Ozzy hasn't released a "real" B-sides or bootlegs compilation yet; you know, with rare stuff like "The Liar" or "Living with the Enemy". Ah, well...maybe if we wish hard enough, someday it will happen...

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars OK, I guess. I'm just tired of Oz releasing complations, July 9, 2005

By 

Joseph M. Siegler (Garland, TX USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Prince of Darkness (Audio CD)

Oh look, another compilation from Ozzy. This one according to the liner notes was an idea from the record company; it wasn't Ozzy's original idea. His liner notes on the matter are somewhat interesting, as he talks about having too many compilations as it is. And he's right. Of the 16 unique releases Ozzy's had over his solo career (not counting remasters and reissues), he's had 8 studio albums, 5 live albums, and 3 greatest hits albums (of which this release is one). If you count live albums as compilations as well, that's half of his releases being stuff that has already appeared elsewhere. What's my point in bringing this up? Some folks keep hoping, keep wishing that we'll get the "Real Ozzy" back. The one that was around in the early 80's. I don't think that's ever coming back. That train sailed when he replaced Bob Daisley & Lee Kerslake on the reissues of his first two albums. That's the kind of thing a media star does. Make Money. That's what this set really seems to reek of to me. A cash grab. But let's talk about the actual content here..

Disc 1 has various studio tracks and live tracks (no studio with Daisley/Kerslake, though) on it. There's nothing new here, this is all reissued material that's been released somewhere before. Spiders is somewhat a rarity to the US audience, as it appeared on the European version of Bark at the Moon, and the 2002 reissue of said album in the US. I suspect most casual Ozzy fans don't know that one. The songs covered here run his first three studio releases (Blizzard, Diary, & Bark).

Disc 2 has more of the same, but has some songs in demo form on here. A couple of them are quite interesting, actually. Of particular note is the Bang Bang song, which is a demo of Facing Hell from the Down to Earth album. The demos make this disc worthwhile to me, unlike Disc 1 which is mostly useless if you've been buying all of Oz's output since 1981 like I've been doing.

Disc 3 is fairly odd. This is a collection of some (but not all) of the duets Ozzy has done. Some are more serious attempts at songs (Purple Haze, I Ain't No Nice Guy). Some are goofy (Born to be Wild with Miss Piggy & the Bee Gee's Stavin Alive with Dweezil Zappa), and some are really odd (Wu Tang Clan). The studio song Psycho Man by Black Sabbath is on here (from the 98 Reunion album by Sabbath). This disc is an attempt to cull together these oddball appearances by Ozzy. But they're not all here. His most successful such song was "Close My Eyes Forever" with Lita Ford. That was technically a Lita Ford song with Oz on it, so there might be a rights issue, or they might be saving it for Prince of Darkness II. Anyway, I have a hard time saying this disc is bad, because it's not, but it definitely has a weird feeling I can't quite describe. And for the record, I've always loved the Miss Piggy duet. I saw it for what it was, a goof.

Disc 4 is the "new" disc. It's a collection of newly recorded covers by Ozzy. I think your enjoyment of this disc will be dependant on whether or not you like the original songs here. Some of them I do. Most I never much cared for even in their original form. Some of the stuff that works for me is 21st Century Schizoid Man, Mississippi Queen, Fire, & my favorite of the disc, "All the Young Dudes". Sympathy for the Devil doesn't really work here, and the absolutely nauseating cover of the old Sabbath chestnut, "Changes" is here - in it's vomit inducing glory. OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but this cover of a Sabbath song he does with his daughter Kelly is really not that great at all. So there's some bright points here, but most of this disc is just "Eh" to me.

For me, the strongest point of this entire package is the packaging itself. The hardcover booklet seems pretty well put together - some of these things feel like they're going to fly apart when you pick them up. Also, some of these multi disc sets feature some really odd CD holders (like ones where you have to remove one disc if you want to get at the one below it). Nothing like that here. All presented nice and neatly. The booklet itself I really like too. Has the self deprecating intro (Not another compilation bit from Oz), as well as a boatload of photographs and pics of memorabilia. My favorite part is the couple of pages where Oz has a few paragraphs about each track that appears on the set. I wish more artists would do that, it does make it feel a little more personal when they write something about everything on there. Finally, there was a pass in the box set for a free ticket to Ozzfest 2005 if you validated it by a certain date. I thought it was a nice value added thing, assuming you were interested in going to Ozzfest.

To sum up, I can't really recommend the set to those fans of Ozzy's who have been following him for a long time. There's nothing inherently wrong with the music on here. The music on the first two discs is good, it's just the entire thing seems like another attempt to get more $ from the fans than an attempt at a heartfelt compilation with lots of odd songs collected in one place. The packaging is good, the music is good, yet I never really find myself wanting to reach for this to listen to it.

If you don't have any of Ozzy's previous greatest hits packages, then this is probably worth it for you, as the production value on the set is high - the quality is there, but long time fans will be bored I think as the majority of the stuff on here they've heard many times before.