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But LOOK: You guys in the Ozzy and Sharon camp, I don't know what your were thinking, altering this classic, iconic album. Although it's yours to tamper with as you please, you MUST consider the millions of fans, myself included, who grew up with this recording and loved Randy Rhoads. You have drained all color and life from "Diary Of A Madman". A simple remastering to boost quality and signal-to-noise levels would have sufficed. For examples on how to do re-mastering properly, just listen to the Judas Priest re-master series to hear how it SHOULD be done.
My rating gives 2 stars purely as nostalgia for the music itself. I would have given 5 stars if this had been done properly.


Buy the 8 track original, not this horrible remaster.   May 31, 2003
 45 out of 48 found this review helpful

Musically, this is a great album. The redone bass and drums, however, are horrible and detract from the "remaster" in every way. Buy a used copy of the totally superior early remaster with the tiny little album cover. Any early copy, cassette or LP or whatever, beats this catastrophe of a "remaster."


Beware! This is NOT the original album!   April 5, 2002
 24 out of 24 found this review helpful

I recently heard that two of my all-time favorite albums, Ozzy Osbourne's "Blizzard of Ozz" and "Diary of a Madman," had undergone a 24-bit remastering process, and were to be re-released on CD. I couldn't wait to check them out, and I purchased them the moment they became available.

The first clue that something was wrong came while I was leafing through the booklet for "Blizzard." The old back cover photo of Ozzy on stage with guitarist Randy Rhoads, bassist (and lyricist) Bob Daisley, and drummer Lee Kerslake had been doctored so that only Ozzy was now visible. Strange, I thought.

Then I sat down to listen. My first reaction to "Blizzard" was that the drumming sounded sloppier than I remembered. Skipping from track to track, I noticed some things were sounding very different, and that the album seemed to have not only been remastered, but had been completely remixed from the original multi-track tapes.

Giving the liner notes a closer look, I discoved that all of the bass and drum tracks for both albums have been re-recorded by current Ozzy sidemen Robert Trujillo and Mike Bordin, respectively.

I'm not kidding.

At this point I began to get pretty upset. The bass and drum tracks have been re-recorded in such a way as to mimic the original sound of the albums, but it doesn't work: Trujillo's bass is actually noticably out-of-tune on a couple of numbers, and Bordin's drumming never matches the feel of the original tracks. Of course, "Blizzard of Ozz" was a somewhat lo-fi album to begin with. What about "Diary of a Madman," the album I've long characterized as the "Sgt. Pepper" of Heavy Metal?

In my opinion, "Diary" has been ruined. From the opening drum triplets of "Over the Mountain" everything is wrong, wrong, wrong. Every ounce of magic the album had has been sucked out of it. Randy's guitar tones are completely [messed] up. Some of his solos and fills are barely audible, and his various effects and textures have been replaced with a dry, shrill tone in many spots. The new mix retains none of the charm, atmosphere, or detail of the original. Even "Flying High Again" sounds awful. Why on earth would Ozzy mess with one of the greatest sounding albums in hard rock history?

Well, according to Sharon Osbourne, Daisley and Kerslake have been removed from the albums because they have been "harrassing" the Osbourne family. The truth is that Bob Daisley and Lee Kerslake are suing Ozzy for non-payment of royalties and for crediting others (Rudy Sarzo and Tommy Aldridge) for their work on "Diary of a Madman." By removing them from the recordings, Ozzy can ensure that Daisley and Kerslake will receive no future mechanical royalties from his back catalog. This is simply an act of monumental greed and arrogance, and I implore you not to support Ozzy in this shameful endeavor.

These CD's are being promoted as "original recording remastered," with no outward indication to the buyer that they have been re-recorded with sidemen Randy Rhoads never even met. It is an unforgivable affront to Randy's memory, and it is deliberately misleading to Ozzy's longtime fans. Unfortunately, these will soon be the only versions of these albums you can buy, so get the 1995 22-bit remasters while you still can: They sound fantastic and are the only authentic versions of these hard rock masterpieces.


Diary of a Madman is right, what was Ozzy thinking?!   July 8, 2003
 24 out of 24 found this review helpful

I have always loved the 1995 remastered edition of Diary of a Madman, and when this, the 2002 remaster came out I bought it quickly, expecting virtually the same if not better than the 1995 version (also what with the bonus track and all), but as soon as I put it in the CD player it didn't sound right at all. Then I looked in the info about it in the booklet and it said that the original drums and bass guitar had been cut out and replaced with new recordings by Ozzy's current bass player and drummer, Robert Trujillo and Mike Bordin. Now don't get me wrong, I have great respect for both of them, but they do not do the songs anywhere remotly near the justice they deserved when they were originally recorded by Bob Daisly and Lee Kerslake. If you are looking to buy Diary of a Madman, DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES BUY THIS ALBUM, GET THE 1995 REMASTER (the one with the small album cover in the middle with the green background and OZZY written down the right-hand side in big yellow letters)


asdf   March 17, 2006
 22 out of 22 found this review helpful

Dont get me wrong, Diary of a Madman is probably one of the bands best albums, but this re-release is to be thrown away. They completely re-recorded the bass and drum tracks with the current Ozzy members, so that they wouldnt have to pay the original band members royalties, even though they were some of the ones that wrote and arranged songs with Randy, Ozzy usually has nothing to do with the music, and quite often doesnt even write lyrics.

I will never purchase another Ozzy album again, do yourself a favor and try to find the original recording of this album on ebay or something. Do not give a single penny to these greedy people.