Album Review: Zakk Wylde's Black Label Society - Grimmest Hits

Having reunited with 'the boss' (aka Ozzy) and revisited his soul/country/blues solo roots via Book Of Shadows II, shredder Zakk Wylde reconvenes Black Label Society, crafting fire-and-brimstone heavy metal with seemingly added vigour.

Grimmest Hits (note: not a hits collection of any kind) isn't the work of a band still grappling to locate their definitive voice. Having created numerous albums built around Wylde's Ozzy-influenced vocals and Alice In Chains-esque harmonising that neatly offsets bruising riffage, alongside a few ballads, Black Label Society know their sound, know it well, and are readily aware of how to please their audience.

While Wylde in this guise has a reputation for displaying all the subtlety of a wolf on steroids on occasion, overall this proves a more measured, seasoned affair even if it could've been culled by a track or two. Wylde devotees will dig the guitar pyrotechnics of Trampled Down Below and The Betrayal. However, Bury Your Sorrow's welcome nod to Black Sabbath proves equally satisfying, as do Nothing Left To Say and the soulful The Day That Heaven Had Gone Away. Both are less overwrought, accomplished detours into mellower territory than has sometimes been the case in recent Black Label Society history.

While unlikely to win too many converts to the cause, for the already initiated there's far more (ahem) hits than misses.