Ozzy is a man who is often down, but crucially one who is never out. Three years ago, when he released his Ordinary Man album, he was still recovering from a year and a half of physical ailments – staph infection, major neck surgery following a fall that dislodged previous neck surgery – and announced around its release that he was living with a form of Parkinson's disease. The album itself occasionally looked deep into the darkness, oft talking about The End, while the title-track was a duet with Elton John that sang about bringing the curtain down and 'just an empty stage', with a feeling not unlike Sinatra's My Way.
But, just as when his '90s "retirement" plan lasted less than a year ("Got bored, went back to work," he shrugged at the time), Ozzy without music just isn't a thing. Bringing in mates to help out – Duff McKagan, Andrew Watt, Chad Smith, Post Malone – he said making the record with no real plans of what would happen to it actually made him feel normal.
It's a similar situation on Patient Number 9. It's Ozzy doing music because it's a laugh, it's what he loves. The guestlist has expanded to include his long-time gunslinger Zakk Wylde, Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi, Pearl Jam's Mike McCready, Metallica bassist and former bandmate Robert Trujillo, Cream legend Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Taylor Hawkins, among others. It might not have anything with the same riotous energy as It's A Raid, his punked-up duet with Post Malone that went off like a feral firework, but it still radiates a sense of the thing you love keeping you excited and feeling alive.