The "Devil You Know" ROCKS!

[Parsifal]

There are songs here I loved right off the bat: "Atom and Evil", "Bible Black", "Rock 'n' Roll Angel", "Follow the Tears"...in fact I'd be so bold as to call both "Bible Black" and "Breaking into Heaven" two of the best Black Sabbath/Iommi/Dio songs since 1981.

The only problem for me is, the band only experimented a tiny bit; "Breaking Into Heaven" seems to be the one track that asserts an actual Heaven and Hell band sound as a separate entity from Black Sabbath-with-Dio.

I notice that, even after six listens, I'm not liking either "Double the Pain" or "Turn of the Screw" much at all. They sound kind of forced to me. "Eating the Cannibals" has a terrific Iommi guitar solo, and "Fear" and "Neverwhere" certainly stand up to the "Dehumanizer" material (a great album in my humble opinion).

So, this album for me went from a rather wary first listen to this 6th and very affirming listen.

This is very much one you have to listen to several times to really "get", and it gets much better with each listen from there. Dio hasn't been this unhysterical/restrained (in the good way) since Heaven and Hell, he's mostly staying within his range, and it suits him far better. The growling is here, but used sparingly and thus to excellent effect. Some have stated that he's a bit "pitchy", but no more than he's been since "Dehumanizer". He matured in his approach, not so much monster-mouth from him here.

As far as guitar playing goes, Tony Iommi is tastier than he's been since the Ozzy years...very little of the super legato trills he used so much of on the Dio-led albums. It's like he, like Ronnie, decided not to push his range out to an unflattering limit, and the results go down REAL good. But, that's just me, I want more tasty stuff from everybody, tired of the shred.

This is mostly prime Doom Metal, but with sides to it never explored in the early Sabbath.

I put it away last night, after the first five listens, just to get some distance from it. But it says alot that I couldn't wait to pull it back out off the shelf this evening. I couldn't wait anymore.
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Catch the Rainbow