Blizzard of Ozz oldies thrills Black Sabbath fans

DALLAS - Reports from the road this summer have not been kind to Ozzy Osbourne and the rest of Black Sabbath.

The headliners of the annual all-day Ozzfest metal festival -- and without much question the genre's most influential band -- the Sabbath have, according to the grapevine, been turning in some sub-par sets that have been easily eclipsed by Judas Priest, who have reunited with lead singer Rob Halford for the first time in over a decade.

Maybe so, but such was not the case Thursday night at the Smirnoff, where an animated Osbourne led the Sabbath through classics such as N.I.B., the anti-cocaine anthem Snowblind and Iron Man.

Sabbath took the stage about 9:30 p.m. with a crunching version of the anti-war War Pigs, which included footage of Nazis marching through Paris, bombs raining from the sky and Adolf Hitler -- but not, as earlier in the tour, shots of President Bush.

The forcefulness of Pigs set the tone for the rest of the band's set, which included Fairies Wear Boots, Into the Void, the slow, ultra-doomy Black Sabbath and more, including the above songs.

Although much of the crowd of around 15,000 was too young to have been alive when these songs were first released, they sang along, word for word, with rapt fervor; such is the hold Sabbath continues to hold on the metal audience. Many of the bands on this year's tour -- such as Hatebreed and Slipknot -- are also young, but it takes an old warhorse like the Sabbath to draw the big numbers.

Not that Judas Priest didn't help. A lot. Playing just before Sabbath as the sun set, the band -- which, like Ozzy and company, also hails from Birmingham, England -- roared through a 13-song, three-encore set that featured Breaking the Law, The Green Manalishi, Electric Eye, Painkiller and Victim of Changes.

Halford's voice -- alternating from a throaty growl to that famous high-pitched shriek -- sounded hardly a day older than when the band was coming up in the late '70s.

Playing in the late afternoon heat just before the Priest, California's Slayer -- another band that's been around for more than 20 years -- turned in a 45-minute set that felt phoned in from the tour bus.