Black Sabbath - The Dio Years

[Liu]

Black Sabbath - The Dio Years
Rhino

The last decade or so has been a strange time if you're a Black Sabbath fan. After the band reunited with former frontman Ozzy Osbourne, the future seemed bright. Unfortunately, rather than focus their energies in writing new material, the band ended up in a cycle of endless touring, playing the same tired songs night after night. Whats more, there was almost an unspoken campaign to erase the band's existence between 1980 and 1996, as if the band existed in limbo instead of releasing some of their strongest material that rivals the Ozzy stuff. Thankfully, a chance meeting between Tony Iommi and Ronnie James Dio would finally change things, resulting in a Dio-Sabbath reunion tour under the unnecessary name of Heaven And Hell (everyone in the crowd is still gonna chant "Sabbath" anyway) and this compilation I'm writing about here.

Usually I tend to stay away from compilations such as this, after all I already own all of the Dio-era releases. The Dio Years is a bit different though, not only are the old songs beautifully re-mastered, but there are three brand-spanking new songs for our enjoyment. First lets look at the re-mastered classics. The tracklisting is overall solid, having the selection of bona fide classics like Neon Knights, Heaven And Hell, Die Young, The Mob Rules and Falling Off The Edge Of The World. There are also inclusion of some highly unrated tracks like Lonely Is The Word and After All (The Dead). This is all great, but the collection is severely crippled by the omission of one of the band's greatest songs ever (Dio-era or not), Sign Of The Southern Cross. The lack of this one song is a huge strike against the compilation. I would had happily sacrificed Lady Evil or Turn Up The Night in exchange for Sign Of The Southern Cross. This ill gripe aside, the re-mastering sounds wonderful. For once, the bass is actually dominant in the mix.

Now that leaves us with the three new songs: The Devil Cried, Shadow Of The Wind and Ear In The Wall. The first two of those are in a similar vein, slow doomy songs not far removed from the Dehumanizer material, or what Dio has done in his solo band in the last few years. The band acts like they never broke up in '92. Iommi churns out his trademark riffs that started a whole genre while Dio is doing what he does best, singing his ass off, easily belting out amazing vocal lines that he long ago perfected. Geezer continues to astonish, showing how to properly use a bass guitar when so many low-end stringers today try to dazzle everyone with unnecessary complicated wankery. Ear In The Wall is a much more up tempo song, serving as a well-needed counterbalance to the other song's slow pace. Its arguable whether these songs are up to the high quality standards set by this incarnation's other output (I think they are), but when you get right down to it, this is the only new Black Sabbath material in a decade and a much more fitting closing bookmark to the band's legacy than those two laughable studio songs that were on the Ozzy Reunion live album.

Of course, I'm hoping for even more material to emerge with Dio on tow, but this is mostly a fool's hope. Pretty soon Iommi will go back to being Ozzy and Sharon's slave, toiling away on the yearly Ozzfest side show and further disgracing Sabbath's legacy by acting as second banana to a ridiculously past-his-prime singer moved by puppet strings. But Dio-dammit, Sharon will have to pry away my copy of Heaven And Hell out of my cold dead hands.


01. Neon Knights
02. Lady Evil
03. Heaven And Hell
04. Die Young
05. Lonely Is The Word
06. The Mob Rules
07. Turn Up The Night
08. Voodoo
09. Falling Off The Edge Of The World
10. After All (The Dead)
11. TV Crimes
12. I
13. Children Of The Sea (live)
14. The Devil Cried
15. Shadow Of The Wind
16. Ear In The Wall

Score: 8/10