Rob Halford and Ozzy Osbourne at the ACC

Yesterday, two of metal music's absolute giants, Rob Halford and Ozzy Osbourne, visited the Air Canada Centre in Toronto. The ACC was packed with festive metal heads from all over Ontario. Every age group was represented, both those who have been there from the beginning, head banging to the early Judas Priest and Black Sabbath, and the younger kids, who probably just know about Mr. Osbourne from his MTV reality show, "The Osbournes." In any case, the hordes of heavy dudes and gals were in for one spectacular experience.
Halford's performance The audience at the ACC received Halford as the metal god that he is – cheering till their lungs were about to burst. The first few rows, kicked their chairs to the side, enabling them to stand up and head bang properly to Halford's pumping metal tunes. Right from the get go, old school full throttle heavy metal filled the ACC, energizing everyone from the front rows to those in the back, sitting just underneath the roof.
If anyone should be in doubt, Halford has been at the centre of heavy metal for about four decades. This was cemented in the second song on the evening's set-list, the one-song Halford biography “Made In Hell.” The crowd grew even more excited and the cheering turned into an inferno of metal roars. Rob continued with “Locked And Loaded.”

Old school heavy metal dudes wear their leather jacket with pride and so did Halford yesterday. However, he had to let go of it just before presenting his latest album “Made Of Metal,” due to the increasing temperature at the ACC. The album is in stores now and the title track is as head bang friendly as anything Mr. Halford has ever laid his hands on – and the crowd loved it.

Throughout Halford's set, you could definitely feel the love – thousands of metal heads' love for heavy metal music. At the end of his set, Halford articulated the atmosphere, “we love you metal heads. Thanks for keeping the metal faith.” The love was clearly mutual, as the fans reached out for their metal god, head banged and sang along throughout the entire show. All in all, an awesome show. Four decades of experience truly does make a difference. Make sure to check out Halford next time he's in town!



Ozzy Osbourne's performance
The Ozzy concert was kicked off with a brief and humorous film montage with Ozzy in key roles in popular movies and TV shows, such as “Avatar,” “Jersey Shore,” “The Hangover,” “Twilight” and (of course) “Iron Man.” In one of the most well received film clips, Ozzy, in the role as a street wise punk, got whipped verbally by Snooki from Jersey Shore, after telling her to “shut the fuck up.” Another clip  also spiked wide spread cheering. After opening his coat and flashing Bella Swan from the Twilight series, Ozzy told her, “fuck vampires, I'm the prince of darkness.”
The film montage served as a great appetizer for what the audience at the ACC had in store. Ozzy came running on stage and set the score right from the get-go: “the crazier you'll go tonight, the longer we play. Let the madness begin!” And so it did.

Ozzy himself added to the madness with non-stop jumping and running around on stage. It was tough not to get sucked into the energy field created by Ozzy and soon, thousands and thousands of metal heads were jumping with their fists high in the air. Ozzy didn't even take a few minutes to just stand around and catch his breath. When he needed to cool down, he nosedived into a bucket of water and then went on. The twenty first rows weren't allowed much rest either. If they chose to stand around for too long, Ozzy would blast them with a hose, spooling out litres of some weird looking foam substance.

Oh yes, and the music. Ozzy's fall tour has been put together in support of his latest album, “Scream.” However, the crowd at the ACC got back to back hits from very different points of the metal icon's career, including 5-10 of Black Sabbath's biggest hits. There was no particular highlight of the evening – the show was one long climax, thanks to Ozzy's impeccable performance. From stage, Ozzy yelled, “I'm still crazy after all these years. It's good to be crazy.” This metal music examiner will have to agree with the prince of darkness on that one – it surely worked well at the ACC yesterday night.

The concert lasted for much more than two hours and every minute was a memorable one. Summing it all up, the Ozzy show truly contained a little bit of everything - humour, craziness, high voltage energy, fireworks, foam guns and good old school heavy metal. Ozzy looked younger compared to his appearances over the past years. Thumbs up, high fives, fist bump and a “well done” from this metal music examiner.

Photo: Tom Pandi