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.

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...

My first question is how can fans hate this box set? It has as little standard Ozzy as possible; instead it fills that space with live versions of the tracks. There are many songs that are different from their original versions and others that have never been released before. In defense of some of the songs on disk three, it is my opinion that Ozzy screwing around and having fun create some of the greatest performances of his career. If you want a standard Ozzy album, save you money and got buy the Greatest Hits album. If you like less heard songs, live versions of more popular songs and some vintage Ozzy, this box set is worth every penny.

I recently found a dirt-cheap used copy of this box set and couldn't resist. I almost wish I had. I am sure as hell pleased that I didn't part with the full purchase price.

Disc 1:

If you're enough of an Ozzy fan to be interested in a box set, you probably already have everything here. You might even be like me, and have most of it several times over (LP, cassette, CD, remastered CD, etc.). If you don't, be forwarned that all the tracks here from Blizzard and Diary (tracks 2, 3, 6, 8, and 9) are the god-awful, bastardized re-recorded versions. These versions might sound listenable to those who have never heard the originals, but to those of us who have, they sound like crap warmed over at best.

If you don't have them already, run, don't walk, to a used CD store and get the 1995 remasters of these two classic albums. You want the ones with small covers and "OZZY" in big yellow letters down the right side.

Disc 2:

This is the best (or should I say "least bad") of the four, and the only reason I gave this box set 2 stars instead of 1. After you get past the live versions of material from Ultimate Sin (why are there only live versions from this album, which has been out of print for some time?), there are some rather interesting demos and a nice live version of "Perry Mason." It's hardly great, but it is worth a listen if you're a longtime fan.

Disc 3:

Put this one in your computer. Rip MP3s of the excellent "Psycho Man" (better heard on the far superior Black Sabbath "Reunion" album)

], and the marginally listenable "Pictures Of Matchstick Men." Now that you've liberated these two tracks, you'll find a multitude of uses for disc 3 of Prince Of Darkness -- a nice coaster to protect your furniture from those nasty beer stains, target practice, dog chew toy, or, come 4th of July, you could even microwave it for your very own fireworks show!

Ozzy doing rap, disco, and a duet with Miss Piggy? Give me a break! Why not just record a full CD of the sound of a hyena passing a kidney stone the size of a baseball?

Disc 4: Everything here, except for the nauseating final track, is available on the "Under Cover" CD released a few months after this. It consists of cover tracks, along the lines of similar recent releases by the likes of Rush, Queensryche, and Def Leppard (though all three of those are superior to anything here). The final track, a butchered version of the Black Sabbath classic "Changes" with his daughter Kelly Osbourne, is enough to have any Ozzy fan looking for a barf bag. Not to mention the "skip" button...

Ok, the first 2 CD's are good. Demos, live songs, etc... What else can you ask for? then you start listening to CD #3. Ummm, duets with rappers??? what the $#$@% was that??? come on, is true Ozzy is not out to please loyal fans but to make new ones. I agree with most reviewers, the price of the boxset is a bargain, but if I want to pay money to listen to Ozzy stuff, it BETTER be Ozzy stuff, not collaboration with others that is just crap. What's next? Maiden doing duets with Gwen Stefani? Oh please no...I'm a huge METAL fan...lets keep it that way...

Bottom line, buy at your own risk. If you are an loyal Ozzy fan, you may not like it. If you are a newbie that listens to today's mainstream music, maybe you'll find this pleasent to your ears.