Wizards of Ozz?

Black Sabbath, Slipknot, Papa Roach, and Marilyn Manson

by Ted Drozdowski

Marilyn Manson

One of the joys of heavy metal, and of OzzFest, is the amplification of the everyday into something bigger, louder. Under the added heat of performance, private emotional issues become communal screeds, modest satires about personifying the Devil become scathing social critiques. Even the amplification is amplified, until the industrial drone of the working world and the jackhammer logic of the music converge.

Although the annual OzzFest tour, the fattest cash cow on the summer concert circuit, takes its name from its biggest star, Ozzy Osbourne, at times last week's stop at the Tweeter Center, in Mansfield, seemed more like Frank L. Baum's Oz. The soiled Emerald City of tattoo artists, body piercers, junk-jewelry dealers, fruit-drink makers, and other carpetbaggers who travel with the festival turned it into a concert event of a different color. The second-stage up-and-comers, who included Mudvayne and Crazy Town, were the obedient flying monkeys, grateful for a shot at the big time. Among the headliners, Osbourne himself was a kind of Glinda the Good, teetering on his shaky legs as he sprayed the crowd with water rather than fairy dust, easing the burden of 10 hours in the summer heat. Marilyn Manson was a Wicked Witch, trying hard to be nasty but ultimately dissipated by his own worn-out S&M Nazi shtick. Slipknot were a little bit of everything at once -- confused and heartless men of tin and straw, overwhelmed Dorothys, fake Wizards. They played with the fury and elocution of wild beasts. And then there was Papa Roach, an ineffectual group of Munchkins making hollow proclamations.

Slipknot and Osbourne's reunited Black Sabbath were the most entertaining outfits. Sabbath's original line-up played monstrously well despite Ozzy's occasional power shortages. And Slipknot's absolutely unintelligible delivery was hilarious, as was their posture of profundity as they wore their trademark cartoon horror-show masks, pretended to jerk each other off, rode flying drum kits, and beat on kettledrums with their heads like a crew of 14-year-old boys on Halloween. Each song skidded to a stop that sounded roughly like "Yaarugghhh!!! [pause] Thank you!"

Rich dialogue dripped from Papa Roach's great white wailer Coby Dick: "You people sitting on your ass; you can eat a bowl of fuck." Otherwise, Papa Roach were four energetic men in black with no concept of melody or musicianship. I've often wondered who listens to them, since the millions of albums they've sold sound far better than the flat rhythms and weak chordal playing of their live performance. The answer is apparently everyone, since they played to a full house that stayed mostly on its feet screaming along. Oddly, many sweaty shirtless men with bloated beer bellies congregated in the front rows while Papa Roach and Slipknot played, yet they seemed to disappear when Manson and Sabbath took the stage. Draw your own conclusions.

Slipknot singer Corey Taylor was also quotable. After complaining that a conservative faction in Manchester, New Hampshire, is trying to ban Slipknot's show there, he aired this biscuit: "What the fuck is wrong with these old Christian motherfuckers. Yeah, I wear a mask, I play fucking heavy rock and roll, and I worship Satan. If you don't like it, suck my cock." This is surely the kind of well-reasoned response that will make his case -- or at least more headlines.

At last there was a reunion set of the original Black Sabbath, who are now in their early 50s. Ozzy ran across the stage in baby steps, looking like a lost boy and taking the greatest delight in spraying the crowd with water hoses while being careful not to super-soak the teleprompter to his left that jogged his battered memory. It seemed as though clapping his hands over his head took great effort, yet he mostly delivered the goods when he sang. Guitarist Tony Iommi was the night's star musician, playing melodies, bomb clusters of low tones, and zippy sliding riffing all over a fretboard bearing the band's trademark crosses in mother-of-pearl inlays. He took every opportunity to solo at length, making up for the energy that Osbourne no longer possesses. Bill Ward, chubby and gray-haired, and bassist Geezer Butler, looking as slim and healthy as Iommi, generated more raw power and focused drive than all of Slipknot, keeping old Sabbath favorites like "War Pig" and "Iron Man" on a propulsive edge and even giving a lift to a new song about nightmares called, unsurprisingly, "Scary Dreams."