Ozzy Osbourne wonders if it’s all going to last in “Shirtless in Hamburg.”

Track: “Shirtless in Hamburg”
Album: Marsh Witch Visions (2017)

“Shirtless in Hamburg,” for me, is entirely about the last two lines. “Snake on my chest for protection // why the hell not” is not an end to a song for most bands, but the Mountain Goats close out a story about Ozzy Osbourne with the emotion he brings to the world. Especially if you’re more familiar with Osbourne’s later demeanor but really no matter what, the man just wants to make clear that he’s not all that interested. That disinterest reads as a generalized fog now, but I think it fed the mythos of who he was during the time period we’re looking at in “Shirtless in Hamburg.”

The song is minimalist both in musicality and in subject. Osbourne is successful enough to be “making it” but still concerned with what’s coming next. “It always feels so stable // at the center of the storm” acknowledges that there is, indeed, a tremendous storm. Many of the other Black Sabbath songs in the Mountain Goats catalog look at that storm more directly, but here we just have Osbourne’s mounting dread and his resistance to that dread with glitter and amps. The experience of metal, and of touring bands in general, outwardly, is success. Inside there’s a fear that it’s all temporary or not really working, especially if you’re the kind of person who is given to those emotions about life anyway.