The Blessed Hellride

The Blessed Hellride is a work on which Zakk Wylde bound thick guitar riffs and a Southern blues feel to a heavy, dragging groove. In fierce songs it pushes out weight, in restrained passages it leaves the melancholy of the singing, creating undulation that never turns monotonous. In this period the band further refined the balance of heaviness and lyricism. “Stillborn,” a guest appearance by his mentor and close friend Ozzy Osbourne, is a song emblematic of this record, telling of the depth of the two men’s relationship. Songs like “Doomsday Jesus,” “The Blessed Hellride” and “Funeral Bell” breathe weight and aggression too. A song like “We Live No More” holds an introspective melancholy. Within the raw sound there is the afterglow of melody, and the presence of the guitar guides the songs’ emotion. It is a powerful, BLS-style record that bluntly bound heaviness and lyricism.