`Ozzfest': The Wizardry Of Ozzy

----------------------------------------------------------------- Concert preview

"The Ozzfest: Ozzy Osbourne, Danzig, Sepultura and Biohazard," 7 p.m. tomorrow, Tacoma Dome; $29.50, 628-0888. -----------------------------------------------------------------

Are you man enough? Do you have the stamina? Are you ready to get soaked?

Tomorrow night's "Ozzfest" in the T-Dome is a test of a metal fan's mettle. It's going to be four-plus hours of the head-bangingest, bloodlettingest, ear-splittingest hard rock in the history of the planet. The action on stage will be matched only by that in the first-aid station. This show will be so violent, it'll probably inspire a video game.

And let's face it, some of Ozzy's fans aren't so young anymore. He himself is just a few years short of 50, and many of his most faithful followers go back to the first Black Sabbath album 26 years ago. But Ozzy has picked up a lot of younger fans along the way. At his shows, bald grandfathers rub tattooed shoulders with multi-pierced teenagers.

Despite a pronounced paunch which he makes no attempt to hide, the old hell-raiser still attracts young women. Blond beauties always seem to be down front at his shows, gleefully getting doused from the buckets of water Ozzy loves to constantly splash over the crowds.

I admit that when Black Sabbath first came out in the 1970s I thought the band was awful. As program director and nighttime disc jockey at progressive rock KOL-FM here, I refused to play the early albums, judging them as childish and exploitive. Then I saw the band in concert and realized there was a lot of sly black humor behind the noise and that Ozzy was an engaging frontman. He has become even better over the years, and his music has a cathartic, tension-releasing effect. His shows always seem like Halloween: a fun freak show that's entirely nontoxic.

The other bands on the bill can't really touch Ozzy in terms of performance, songwriting or just plain fun. But they all have something to set them apart from generic heavy metal, and each has had some success on rock radio and MTV.

Danzig is more famous for its biceps than its music - all the band members pump iron and wear muscle shirts onstage (and on their album covers and in their publicity shots) to show the results. But in one song, all of Danzig's talent and energy came together to produce a fine, if somewhat conventional, hit called "Mother" that gave the band brief fame two years ago.

Sepultura is a Metallica-influenced Brazilian band (its name is Portuguese for "grave") that has the dubious distinction of helping popularize violent, blood-thirsty death metal. But last year, the band put out a surprisingly listenable album called "Chaos A.D." with nice acoustic touches, respectful nods to its country's native music and thoughtful, politically oriented songs.

Biohazard tries to capture the mean streets of New York with pounding, hard-core metal, but its songs, almost all concerning paranoid conspiracy theories the band apparently believes, are just plain nutty.