It’s their first studio album, but hard rock outfit Heaven and Hell is no stranger to heavy metal. In fact, you could say they helped invent the genre.
Inspired by a 2007 world tour, former Black Sabbath members Ronnie James Dio, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Vinny Appice are making a comeback as Heaven and Hell, a moniker borrowed from one of the Sabbath albums fronted by Dio. Their album, The Devil You Know, is packed with power chords, theatrical vocals and ?ber-heavy percussion. Metal fans, rejoice. The Devil You Know is an album fans can sink their teeth into. Iommi nails each riff with expert precision, and Dio shows his vocal prowess on every track.
However, the album’s opener, “Atom and Evil,” falls flat. The song is plodding and repetitive, a structure used in early metal that just seems boring now. Respectably, the band is trying to stay true to the genre and to themselves, but the results are painfully slow.
Fortunately, they pick up the pace pretty quickly. The album’s first single, “Bible Black,” begins as a theatrical power ballad laced with elements of macabre, but morphs into a blood-curdling heavy metal song halfway through. On the band’s official website, Dio calls it a “blockbuster.”
In typical metal fashion, The Devil You Know is full of gruesome imagery, invoking death, destruction, demons and dream sequences that will make listeners cringe. The more progressive and up-tempo “Eating the Cannibals,” is particularly disturbing. “I’m sure you’ve never had this meal before,” Dio croons as the song begins. Perhaps this is some kind of social commentary, but it’s kind of gross. If you prefer not to be tormented by heavy metal demons, The Devil You Know might not be the best album to listen to right before bed.
The rest of the album delivers a decent selection of hard rock, with a few standouts. If the gates of hell had a theme song, “Breaking into Heaven” could be it. The slower, repetitive melody paired with demonic-sounding chord progressions work on this track. The two live songs that close the album, “I” and “Die Young,” are worth checking out on iTunes just for Iommi’s virtuosic guitar solos.
But regardless of their legendary hard rock status, it’s going to take a more provocative album than The Devil You Know for Heaven and Hell to be recognized as a unique entity separate from Black Sabbath. They also need to be careful to not fall victim to the cheesy and clich? imagery that is often characteristic of bands who sing about doom and gloom. Heaven and Hell might not ever catch on entirely; the heavy metal heyday is over. If they want to appeal to contemporary audiences, they need to ditch the plodding tunes and focus on more virtuosic guitar solos and faster melodies.
That being said, this album still manages to rock pretty hard. Heaven and Hell is clearly a band of talented artists. Their sound is ridiculously heavy, but not weighed down. Despite their intensity, most songs on The Devil You Know are intelligently structured with melodic enjoyment in mind. Heaven and Hell might have to work out some kinks, but they are the real deal.
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4 out of 5 stars.
