Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Heaven and Hell - The Devil You Know

Heaven and Hell - The Devil You Know - 2009

THe opening track, "Atom and Evil" (ugh, are these guys 15?) has the pace of a funeral processional. Almost as if the band is trying to instill depression. It's not fun.
Heaven and Hell are the holy/unholy marriage of Dio and Sabbath. 2 parts Dio (Ronnie and drummer Appice), 2 parts Sab (Iommi, Butler). I'm not sure how this even came to be, but I had to include it, even though it meant I would have to listen to Dio's overblown vocal theatrics and uninspired dungeons and dragons lyrics. I really wish it had opened with the big riffs of "Fear" a much more doomtastic track.
After that, it's one same sounding lurching dark metal track after another.
Dio died before they could record another one. I'm not happy he died. But...
I'm not a fan of H&H.

Grade: C-
ASide:
BlindSide: Fear

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Dio - Angry Machines

Dio - Angry Machines - 1996

Dio left Warner Brothers. Or he was dropped. I don't know. I don't really care.

This album seems to double down on the core. These aren't songs, per se, as much as they are exercises in dark, metallic, apocalyptic constructs.
Ho hum. Been here, heard it. ("Sometimes I think I need NEW PARTS FOR MY BRAIN!!!!" - Dio lyric from Institutional Man)
All over this record, Dio seems to have instructed his band to listen to modern metal of the era, perhaps Korn, and try their best to copy it. This results in big, bass heavy almost math metal of "Hunter of the Heart" and the dyslexic backbeats of "Black" and the obnoxious "Stay Out of My Mind", a "song" that, quite literally, sounds like everybody involved was working on something else.
Like Whitesnake, I don't think I need to hear any more of Ronnie James Dio. I get it.

I've listened so you don't have to.

You're welcome

Grade: D-
ASide:
BlindSide:
DownSide:

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Dio - Strange Highways

Dio - Strange Highways - 1995

Metallica really invigorated the medium, didn't they? All that 80s pop-metal posturing has been tossed out the window in the 90s as bands like Sabbath, Ozzy and Dio go for a harder and harder sound.

Strange Highways opens, as so many Dio records do, with the barn burner "Jesus, Mary and the Holy Ghost". It's less a song than it is a laceration, an open wound bleeding with contempt for that who inflicted the wound in the first place. It's followed by some of the most aggressive and ugly music the genre can muster. "Firehead" is not only hard to listen to, it's difficult to follow. It's as though Dio has decided in the war of Metallica vs Megadeth, he will follow the latter. Only to turn back to his Iron Maiden stylings with the epically sludgy title track.
I think I just don't like Dio. There's so little to hold on to. it's like every album is another take on the same themes and style. Which is to say, it all sounds like Ripper Owens era Priest to me now. Well, maybe not Demolition. But it's just as ugly on the inside.

Grade: C-
ASide: Jesus Mary and the Holy Ghost
BlindSide: Give her the Gun
DownSide: Evilution

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Dio - Lock Up The Wolves

Dio - Lock Up the Wolves - 1990

This record explodes with power at the outset. "Wild One" is a barnburner and makes me just hope that the rest of the album can keep up with it. It's more likely a testament to new guitarist Rowen Robertson than RJ, honestly. But, like I said on the No Rest for the Wicked review, it's hard for a lead singer to be the musical catalyst. Their instrument is their voice and they are always dependent on the abilities of their hired guns.
But, I know, this is 1990. It's the dawn of the era of CD as king and there's a reason this album clocks in at one hour. The disc, the price demand it. And have no fear, by the second song we are mired in mid-tempo largesse. Apparently, Dio or someone he knows was "Born on the Sun" and he's just gotta sing about it. Its not like this is a bad album. It's just...dull. I've heard it. And while I enjoy this kind of music, I really feel like Dio's said everything he needs to say.
The ballad, "Between Two Hearts" is the kind of phone it in borefest that has given metal a bad name, I just thought that needed saying. And the epic "Lock Up the Wolves", with it's ticking clock intro and outro, is just 7 minutes of snooze. More often than not, Dio sounds like he's aping Freddie Mercury doing his metal thing. "Evil on Queen Street" (hmmm....) just makes you wonder how much better it would have sounded with Freddie on the mic. Whereas "Walk on Water" is actually a treat, that's only because it showcases the band more than any other.

Grade: C-
ASide: Wild One, Walk on Water
BlindSide:
DownSide: Born on the Sun, Night Music

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Dio - Dream Evil

Dio - Dream Evil - 1987

At this point I have to say: Whatever metal has transformed into, it's not pretty, it's not fun, it's kind of boring. It's the same thing over and over and over again. No wonder it was killed so easily by, well, musicians who wrote songs. There's a reason why we still listen to Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Tool, Pearl Jam, 20 years on and no one talks about Dio except as an icon. Certainly not for his lasting gift of music.
I want very much to review this album on it's merits, I really do. Were there anything on the record that I hadn't heard before from the same dwarf-lord, I would leap to sing about it.
Bt, there isn't. That said, for what the style is there's a couple good tracks. "Sunset Superman" is one. And...um...

The fact that there's honest to goodness balladeering (All the Fools Sailed Away) on this record. But it's not even close to what it's supposed to sound like: Meat Loaf. This is his realm and he reveled in it and bathed in it. Dio is no match for the Bat Our of Hell singer, much as he'd obviously love to be. And on something as so obviously pandering as "I Could Have Been a Dreamer", he's not even Bat Out of Hell Loaf, more like Bad Attitude Loaf.

On Dream Evil there's no innovation, no integrity, this is a money grab. It all is.

Grade: C-
ASide: When a Woman Cries
BlindSide: Sunset Superman
DownSide: All the Fools Sailed Away, Naked in the Rain, I Could Have Been a Dreamer

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Dio - Sacred Heart

Dio - Sacred Heart - 1985

Amping up his attempt at commercial viability, RJ Dio's last album with Vivan Campbell is a mixed bag. Every metal cliche is present from declaring himself a King of Rock and Roll to super fast licks to cliche's abounding during the era of Spinal Tap (which neuters whatever bullseye they might have hit otherwise). If you like this sort of thing, a lot of this album will satisfy. If you're over it (and, by 1985, who wasn't?) you'll wanna pass it by.

Grade: D+
ASide: King of Rock and Roll, Rock and Roll Children
BlindSide:
DownSide: Shoot Shoot, Hungry Heaven, Sacred Heart

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Dio - The last in Line

Dio - The Last in Line - 1984

I like this record. I don't expect anything more from it than it is prepared to give.
Taking all he's learned from Rainbow, Elf and Black Sabbath, Ronnie James Dio made the album of his life with the previous Holy Diver. Why change what works?
Need some speed metal? Sure. "We Rock" will take care of that nicely, thank you. and a few tracks later, so will "I Speed at Night, an awesome shreddattack. Some sludge? How about "The Last in Line"? Radio Friendly Groove metal? "One Night in the City"'s got ya covered.
From top to bottom, there are no surprises here just good solid formula rawk.

Grade: A-
ASide: We Rock, I Speed at Night
BlindSide: Evil Eyes, Egypt (Chains are Out)
DownSide: Breathless

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Dio - Holy Diver

Dio - Holy Diver - 1982

Opening with "Stand Up and Shout" A shredtastic offering that uses all the things that I've come to adore in metal (exceptional energetic playing) and none of the things I don't (fantasy mythology), Dio's first solo record is a call to arms from the great midget of rock. This is a song that could fit on Screaming for Vengeance nicely. But I'm not sure I get the big todo behind the title track. In my opinion Survivor is owed royalties for ripping this off from "Eye of the Tiger". Am I wrong? It's good, though. Not the greatest thing I've ever heard....
The album is a great listen top to bottom, perhaps due to the fact that it's loaded with great players and Dio has been waiting his whole life to make it.
"Don't talk to Stranger" might play at being a ballad, but make no mistake this is all cock rock. It lures you in with some nice beatific opening strains but after that minute it gives way to the sword of the master. The false balladeering continues later where the "chalice of the soul" lies in "the palace of the virgin on "Invisible". And seriously, how can you not love "Rainbow in the Dark"? I just read on Wikipedia that the song is about Dio's dissatisfaction with his experiences in Sabbath (And, I imagine, Rainbow given the title). Maybe that's why the song sounds so bloody and superbly desperate. And that synth is just cheesily great.

Holy Diver lives up to its reputation.

Grade: A
ASide: Stand Up and Shout, Rainbow in the Dark
BlindSide: Caught in the Middle, Don't Talk to Strangers, Invisible