It's not so usual that the lead singer of a rock band, who literally wrote the history of the genre, surpasses his mother band on his solo career. In relation to Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne has managed to do this, at least on the key American market, probably thanks to the fact that he bet on the commercially rewarding form of the quickly emerging heavy metal and, at least in the early years, managed to find best quality bandmates who put their skills and personalities into the recordings.

More than forty years later, there is no less controversy associated with good old Ozzy than there was in 1980. He no longer commits all sorts of mischief at concerts and beyond, and clean of most substances he doesn't act like a loose cannon, but most attention is drawn to his health by many fans. It also raises the question of how much influence Osbourne really has on the music that came out on his records in the last two decades, and whether his name is just marketing a job that someone else in the studio had the lion's share of. The album Patient Number 9, which Ozzy released in 2022, offers quite positive answers in my opinion.

The album's main highlight is the title track, Patient Number 9 - the role of the psychologically scarred wretch being "liquidated" by the surrounding system has always suited Ozzy very well. Melodically we have a clear hit here, which is good supported by a very generous seven-minute duration, and the electronic backing lines do a good job as well. Everything here is geared towards perfectly pitched choruses with enlivening backing vocals, and when one of them brings out an arpeggio with an unmistakable tone, chills go down my spine. Jeff Beck didn't do that much work in this track (he basically added a few solo outings), but he left a bit of soul in the little he did. He got a more prominent role in the post-apocalyptic ballad A Thousand Shades, where his soothingly "clucking" solo over a forest of strings forms a counterpoint to the resigned sadness of the rest of the track.

From the second half of the approximately hour-long collection, I really like the piece Nothing Feels Right, from which the inspirational thread winds back to the nineties albums Ozzmosis and Down to Earth, or the dense affair Degradation Rules with perfect harmonica. Ozzy is joined there by former Black Sabbath partner Tony Iommi, and in my opinion, they were more successful here than in the slow piece No Escape from Now, from which the Sabbath "pattern" stares a little too flashy. The choruses of Dead and Gone and Evil Shuffle or the wilderness of Parasite with Zakk Wylde's fuzz-soaked guitar are also good, if you ask.

On his own, Ozzy Osbourne wouldn't be able to make a good record anymore - he doesn't just happen to have that production team and a bunch of reliable sidemen around him. On the other hand, his vocals and lyrics are such an important part of the whole, for which I have quite complimentary words, so it wouldn't have been possible without him. Records that attract star guests and a variable line-up around a refreshed core started to be released after the covid in vast numbers, but in Ozzy's case I think he managed to come up with a very solid record.

The electrified rhythm and blues that began to flow across the Atlantic to the British Isles in the late 1950s was pretty damn cool. It was "food" for many teenagers who, a few years later, would be at the birth of bands like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Who, but it also had the potential to appeal to kids whose chins had barely stopped dripping milk - like the two youngest offspring of Scotland's large Young family. Malcolm and Angus took their love of guitar heroes Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry with them to far-off Australia on the eve of the outbreak of Beatlemania. For the next decade, news of the newborn rock, which was growing up like a sponge and soaking up all the influences it encountered came to them only in spurts. They completely missed the psychedelic delirium, the courtship with jazz and classical or the arching art-rock architecture. What remained in their hearts was the blues, which they did not hesitate to shave to the raw marrow, following the example of the black masters.

Such is the music on AC/DC's debut album High Voltage, on which the brothers (with another sibling, George, as producer) set out to pursue their own rock vision. At its core is the blues, but it's closer to the rhythm-and-blues incisiveness and plainspokenness of black Delta outcasts than to British guitar lyricism. From the hard rock inventory, this music then takes the help of catchy riffs, which add juice and drive to the whole bluesy can. Most of the time, these are not complicated or pieces - AC/DC have been unique in their ability to build novel figures and melodies on a minimum of notes since their beginnings.

The individual tracks on their debut album oscillate between riff-heavy hard rock that even the likes of Free would be ashamed of (Stick Around), loaded stompers (She's Got Balls) and free-flowing treats with a proper bottom-heavy bottom end (Little Lover). The songs don't lack in the slightest for room for instrumental savagery, exemplified by the six-and-a-half-minute long Soul Stripper, which features some blistering solos. Moreover, the two guitarists hadn't quite worked out their roles at that point, so for a good half of the songs, the later "grey eminence" and rhythm player Malcolm shows that he is comfortable with the higher positions of his fingerboard too. Seriously, the Youngs were keeping a close eye on the genre's development in their native Britain - that is evidenced by the fact that they based their arrangement of the Baby, Please Don't Go by "King of the Nine Strings" Big Joe Williams largely on the version released by Irish rhythm-and-bluesmen Them in 1964.

On their debut, the band's hands were clearly not tied in the slightest by the desire to generate a hit. Probably the closest they come to that category is a piece with the instructively titled Love Song, which after a hopefully loaded intro goes into a shallow goo. AC/DC probably faltered here - fortunately only for once - and with a song that didn't do much for the single, they spoiled the ending of an otherwise pretty solid record in my eyes.

Frontman Bon Scott, the author of the vast majority of the lyrics, handled the specific spirit of the album in his own way - following the tried-and-true blues manner, he went about describing women ranging from "vessels full of sin" to incompetent toys designed to satisfy male desires. In some places, with a balanced degree of obscene double entendres, he hit the bull's-eye (She's Got Balls), in others (Love Song) the pathos is rather overwhelming. On the other hand, I much really appreciated the lyrics of the closing track Show Business, which takes on the woes of a musician being ripped off by promoters instead of the weaker sex - a blues evergreen, too, in fact.

All round, High Voltage is a pretty decent debut for me. There's still more in the blues template than the band may have needed to achieve worldwide success, and tempting the audience with pop sweetness won't be necessary in the future either. But the tools that the band will use to inject fresh blood into the veins of exhausted British hard rock within a year and a day are already present in elementary form. Seventies AC/DC are a solid ride with no downright weak spot for me, but in a peer comparison none of the Bon Scott albums fall below the level of the debut.

Lots of people, lots of tastes. Some people won´t hear a bad word against "their" single favourite genre, others are "omnivores" and like to switch between different styles. The second approach has, in my opinion, one big advantage - when I want to take a break from all that progression and fusion (which I'm in those days listening to and discovering something new in every attempt), I can go back to something easier to digest, but almost as fun for me - like good old hard rock, more specifically (for today) a certain Cooper's Witch.

I've neglected Alice Cooper's work in particular for quite a few years now, but with his work from the 70s I still remember what to look forward to most on which record. In the case of the Killer album, in which my ear found favour today, it's clearly the Halo of Flies suite - an eight+ minute near-instrumental (Alice's vocals are actually only heard in the middle section) with a cool hard rock drive and a plethora of musical motifs used. Another cool kick is offered at the very end of the album, when Alice comes out with the sepulchral melodica of Dead Babies and then throws in a bunch of rock riffs, called (eponymously) Killer. I'd definitely consider putting this three-piece on any Cooper best-of list, because I just love it.

But the Killer album doesn't consist just of these three tracks, so what's next? In short - although it's unfortunately not such a hit parade anymore, satisfaction remains on my side. Under My Wheels is a kind of slightly polished rock'n'roll, Be My Lover again equals the intersection of Alice's vocal narration shredded with some chopped guitar kilos, and the quite funny backing vocals in the chorus. Desperado stumbles somewhere between a melancholic guitar pick with string arrangements and a hard rock banger. Cool wailing guitars and venomous vocals bring together the shortest track on the record, the less than two and a half minute You Drive Me Nervous and the hilariously titled Yeah, Yeah, Yeah offers some space for bass and harmonica.

So how does Alice Cooper's Killer album actually affect me? Good rock with a few standout moments, the rest better average. Between three and four stars, the lesser five tracks pull it down more, so we'll stay at an odd number. The best of late 60s/early 70s hard rock must, be sought on the other side of the Atlantic, Alice Cooper remaining merely "good" on Killer.

Many many years ago, when I started earning money, which could buy something more than spare batteries for my mp3 player, I was very sorry that the tickets for the AC/DC concert in Prague were sold out in a moment and I didn't manage to get my own. I knew only a few songs from the band at that time, but I believed them to be rock masters of the stage. No way I knew their current album Black Ice then, I was listening to a best-of their (mostly) 70s hits. I didn't get to the aforementioned CD until a few years later - at one time, various sell-offs were just full of that in Czech Republic. Actually, it may have been my first contact with a complete album from the "Johnson" period, but the differentness compared to the Bon Scott tracks was quite a handicap, especially at first.

Years later, now that I can get to grips with the AC/DC discography, I gave Black Ice another chance. Instead of a CD with compressed sound, I use a vinyl-rip form, but my impressions haven't changed much even after all these years. In my opinion, the album is driven by the overblown opening quartet. I see Rock 'n' Roll Train, despite its stumbling riff, as a clear hit, the likes of which the band hasn't managed since Thunderstruck. I also enjoy the Big Jack chorus and the more laid-back Anything Goes a lot, and in the chopped kilts and sparkly guitar refrains of Skies on Fire I again hear echoes of a path the Young brothers ultimately didn't take. But it gets noticeably weaker from there - especially in some tracks, AC/DC's combination of mid-tempo and lack of catchy musical ideas created a boredom to death for me.

I can highlight rather small things: the bold "synth" sounding guitar line in Smash 'n' Grab, the interesting guitar-bass interplay in the verses of She Likes Rock 'n' Roll or the riffs in the closing title track Black Ice. Just when I feel a hint of an imaginative or at least catchy melody (Wheels), Johnson goes down a completely uninteresting path for me in the next bar, and the catchy rhythm of Rocking All the Way are killed by the melodic "blackout" in the chorus. Then, without exception, I completely dislike alle the here unnamed songs - if I might have enjoyed some of them before, I can't take anything away from them nowadays.

Round and round it seems to be a real bummer with the four songs I like from the album and can enjoy repeatedly. In the future, I'll probably have a lot of second thoughts about embarking on that hour-long anabasis again, and instead "make" a decent four-song EP out of Black Ice. All in all, it comes out to two stars, and I think I'm still pretty merciful.

1977 was certainly not the most prolific year for hard rock music in the United Kingdom. The old "dinosaurs" were either quitting or devoting their favour to the wide American market, and it was too early for the album production of the early members of NWOBHM. In this strange in-between time, alongside bands like UFO, Nazareth, AC/DC or Thin Lizzy, a relatively established, almost six years long touring formation from the Birmingham suburbs called Judas Priest tried to take the next step in their still slowly developing career. With a new record deal in their pocket, the band has gradually begun to blaze a trail for other future members of the brotherhood of aggressive distortion and sixteenth-notes. But the fact that the band was still in their "searching" phase shows fully on their first release for CBS - the album Sin After Sin.

The opener Sinner sounds pretty pumped up, and the accompanying guitar lines of the Tipton/Downing pairing amuse me a lot; unfortunately, the band also inserted a slowed-down instrumental passage into the bowels of the track, which still stumbles backwards to the progressive tendencies of the previous two albums. Even Halford's vocals, at times turning into a rather annoying squeal for me, don't yet have that edge of years to come. Joan Baez's cover of Diamonds and Rust (on the one hand, it sounds utterly implausible that an increasingly harder rocking band would borrow material from a folk bard, on the other hand - with the band's name itself inspired by a Bob Dylan song, I suppose pretty much anything is possible) is another in a line of hilarious covers that Priest have been able to do - fast, melodic and with the potential to be properly hardened.

Starbreaker shows exactly the direction the band would take on subsequent albums - biting guitars, Halford's vibrating but already sovereign vocals in the treble, and a throbbing rhythmic underside. At the same time, he's my biggest (who knew, right?) favorite on the record. It makes it all the more frustrating every time that the following track, Last Rose of Summer, goes in a completely different direction. A calm narrative with Halford's civilian vocals makes it a rather uninspiring end to the first side of the album at five and a half minutes long.

After an awkward opening, Let Us Prey peels off into a passable ride in which the work of hired drummer Simon Phillips and the colourful escapades of the guitar solos are definitely worth mentioning. The track Call for The Priest - Raw Deal does offer some sympathetic riff work, but the slow pace with few changes is not enough for its seven minute length. Oh, and we have another ballad here, named Here Come the Tears, on which Priest seem to have definitively assured themselves that the road to success does not lead past the piano in their case. Closing one Dissident Aggressor comes in with a proper acceleration and a wailing guitar solo, and (like Starbreaker) I more than enjoy it.

So what to do with this trying but still "looking over its shoulder" effort? When Judas Priest tried to rock hard, things were looking very promising, but the slow tempos and ballads drag the record down to below average again - the real "Sin After Sin" is contained mainly on the second side of the album. Along with the debut, I see this record as the weakest thing Judas Priest issued in the seventies or eighties.