While second-stage bands like Three Inches of Blood and Hatebreed kept the nearly capacity Ozzfest 2007 crowd happy, things didn’t even get remotely interesting until the main stage opened. Lordi put on a highly entertaining and often hilarious set, but the monster suits and pyro couldn’t cover up what was at the core: a bad H.I.M. rip-off. Disco sucked, and Static X’s version of “Evil Disco” doubly sucked. Lamb of God sounded nice and heavy, a thunderous lean and mean set of post-Pantera metal, but you just couldn’t shake the feeling that these guys were a second-stage headliner at best.

Ozzy, on the other hand, was in prime rock star mode, drenching the crowd with water and foam and prancing back and forth like the madman of lore. Whereas in years past, the crowd was coming to see acts like Pantera, Slipknot and Marilyn Manson, and then thinning out for the Ozzy/Black Sabbath encore, this year, the crowd, which sported probably the largest collection of prison tattoos ever seen in one place outside the penitentiary, hung tough and partied with Ozzy the whole way through.

He didn’t let them down. Ozzy began with a killer “Bark at the Moon” and moved to solo hits, Sabbath stuff and a healthy dose of material off his new album, Black Rain, which is some of his strongest music in over a decade.