By Ian Murphy

Ok! Been away for a bit with the “Mega Riff” series. Now it’s back, and boy do we have a monster today: “No More Tears” by Ozzy Osbourne. The guitar player on this tune is none other than Zakk “I look like Odin with a guitar” Wylde. This one is special because not only does it contain the heaviest riff in Ozzy’s hallowed canon of songs, it also has an all time great solo. Wylde was the boy prodigy only a few short years prior to this 1991 classic when he debuted on 1988’s No Rest For the Wicked. The Z-Man was only 21 when that one came out and he gave us a taste of future mega riffs with songs like “Breaking All the Rules” and “Crazy Babies”. Having matured a bit since his debut, Wylde comes into his own on “No More Tears”. No longer a young gunslinger, Zakk has now earned “Guitar God” status.

What makes “No More Tears” so great is that the riff is simply monstrous. It is so heavy and so multi-tracked that it threatens to totally overthrow the sonic balance of the song. However, it sits perfectly on that line between ruining the tune and making it a classic. The guitar sound is akin to somehow turning a lion’s roar into music, and is punctuated by Wylde’s trademark “pings”, or pinch harmonics, which add a little bite to the throaty roar. To make this riff even more disgustingly incredible, Zakk does a “call and response” type of thing with a slithery slide guitar part that comes in after the main crunch. In short, Wylde manages to make this riff both “big cat” and “reptilian” by merging the lion and the snake. Wylde went on to make equally brutally heavy music with Black Label Society, but “No More Tears” was his first “baby” as a guitar god. Who else could craft a mythical beast out of a guitar but a god?

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