A couple of years ago Ronnie James Dio, Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi and Vinnie Appice reformed the group that was once known as Black Sabbath and started releasing stuff under the name Heaven and Hell. It's only appropriate since while Dio was the lead singer for Sabbath during the early eighties and then again for a brief time in the nineties, classic Black Sabbath isn't Sabbath without Ozzy.
That doesn't mean I don't like this lineup. On the contrary, I love it and they have released a new album. TODAY! It's entitled The Devil You Know and you can click on the album cover to purchase it at Amazon.
Up until recently I've been purchasing all of my music via iTunes but the biggest problem with that has been that 90% of the stuff I would buy from them is completely unusable for me on my Blackberry Storm. That has been changing recently since they are ditching DRM but in the meantime Amazon MP3 has been making quite a few improvements. One is that the Amazon MP3 downloader automatically adds my purchases to my iTunes playlists (or WMP if that's your flavor of choice) AND it's cheaper to shop at Amazon. For instance, The Devil You Know is 9.99 from iTunes but only 9.90 from Amazon. 9 cents may not seem like a lot of money but I can tell you as a small business manager that the way you make (and save) money is by watching the pennies you spend. Pretty soon it adds up and considering bewteen my wife and I we buy probably five albums a month that adds up over the course of the year.
So on to the album. I bought the single, Bible Black, a couple of weeks ago and it's OK. Nothing great but it's pretty rocking. I am about halfway through listening to the album and just finished syncing it to my Blackberry so I can go work in the yard. So far it's somewhat reminiscent of Dehumanizer but maybe a little harder. Once I've listened to it a couple more times I'll be able to post a full review here.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=e0cf098f-a0c8-4270-8097-45463f6a6428)
That doesn't mean I don't like this lineup. On the contrary, I love it and they have released a new album. TODAY! It's entitled The Devil You Know and you can click on the album cover to purchase it at Amazon.
Up until recently I've been purchasing all of my music via iTunes but the biggest problem with that has been that 90% of the stuff I would buy from them is completely unusable for me on my Blackberry Storm. That has been changing recently since they are ditching DRM but in the meantime Amazon MP3 has been making quite a few improvements. One is that the Amazon MP3 downloader automatically adds my purchases to my iTunes playlists (or WMP if that's your flavor of choice) AND it's cheaper to shop at Amazon. For instance, The Devil You Know is 9.99 from iTunes but only 9.90 from Amazon. 9 cents may not seem like a lot of money but I can tell you as a small business manager that the way you make (and save) money is by watching the pennies you spend. Pretty soon it adds up and considering bewteen my wife and I we buy probably five albums a month that adds up over the course of the year.
So on to the album. I bought the single, Bible Black, a couple of weeks ago and it's OK. Nothing great but it's pretty rocking. I am about halfway through listening to the album and just finished syncing it to my Blackberry so I can go work in the yard. So far it's somewhat reminiscent of Dehumanizer but maybe a little harder. Once I've listened to it a couple more times I'll be able to post a full review here.
I bought it today and I've listened to it twice already. So far it's not really grabbing me. Maybe it's one of those albums that needs a couple of listens.
Pretty much the same here. It's certainly not bad by any means but unfortunately everything that Dio has been involved in over the last few years sounds the same. I love Sabbath and Tony Iommi can usually come up with something fresh but unfortunately for Dio, particularly considering how good as he is, he's a one trick pony.