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Heaven & Hell: The devil you know

14/04/09 || GardensTale

Well, time to write a review on an album with high expectations on a completely blank sheet. What? Yeah, fuckers, I never heard the original Dio-Sabbath albums. I do know their status and how people have been creaming all over the reunion of that particular line-up. So what’s a H&H newbie think of the reincarnation of the dwarf-led metal prototype?

Well, I’ll tell you what, junkmunchers.

Heaven: the opener is just what I had been hoping for. A low-paced, thundering riff that sounds dark and evil without going into the territory of self-mockery. Dio sounds, well, like Dio’s always done. I swear, this guy has more consistency in his singing than the Sahara does in its fucken sand. But his voice suits the song perfectly, like a prophet declaring doom. The lyrics suit the dreary, evil sound:

I’m here for you said the spider to the fly
And when I’m through, you can open up your eyes to see
Your world on fire
And the light that won’t let go
Atom and Evil

Throughout, “Atom & Evil” maintains the grim sound and it’s all in all one that really raises the expectations.

I can happily say the quality of the riffing is superb throughout the album. These guys have been at it for a long time and they know how to write good riffs; that’s all pretty much perfectly written and executed. Most of the songs start off with a simple but very addicting riff, downtuned, evil and getting stuck in your skull faster than a rusty nail from a nail gun.

More good songs include “Bible black”, which has a slow (and frankly, pretty crappy) start but after a minute and a half suddenly turns 180 degrees round and starts pounding out a freely flowing song that sounds like a black sermon, and the closer “Breaking into heaven” with some cool lyrics about, well, breaking into heaven, atop a churning riff of doom.

Hell: Sadly, not everything here is as great as the aforementioned songs (especially “Atom & Evil”: if the whole album was of that quality we’d be looking at a 9 instead of a 6,5. Oops, now I spoiled the score. Ah well, fuck you guys anyway) and especially the center part drags things down in an awful way. “Rock and roll angel” is more sort of an uplifting semi-ballad that feels horribly out of place and sounds more like a second-rate Dio song with heavier rhythm guitars. “Double the pain” sounds off and awkward, especially during the chorus; and “Follow the tears” cannot live up to its promising start and winds up as more filler than anything else.

Worst of the bunch, though, is “Eating the cannibals”: it sounds even worse out of place than the ballad, with a sudden mid-to-high pace, and sarcastic B-horror inspired lyrics with more cheese than a dairy farm. Check out this part:

Don’t close your eyes
We come while you’re sleeping
You reach for the skies
Now we are coming
It’s all falling down

Did they get Ringo Starr to write lyrics for a metal song now?

Truth to be told, it’s not even such a bad song, but it sounds more like it’d be at home on a Nashville Pussy album rather than this one. It doesn’t help the consistency of the album one bit, and gives everything a strong patchwork feeling rather than one solid album.

There are several problems to pinpoint with the album as a whole. First, the production. Not a lot of thought has been put into what kind of sound to get, instead, the ‘modern production’ option was highlighted and the computer did the rest. Vocals too high in the mix, guitars too clean and smooth; H&H is aiming for the big crowds, quite clearly, but a more old-school production certainly would add a bit of extra spice to it.

The singing and riffing is of consistently high quality; the songwriting is not. Nearly everything between and including “Double the pain” and “Follow the tears” sounds like watered-down Dio with lyrics so cliché it’s a miracle the producers didn’t send the guys away, laughing their asses off. I know lyrics are only a very small part of the music but they just get in the way here; it gets grating, you stop taking the music seriously when Dio lays down one cheesy line after another; very ineffective way to keep interest. And it’s inexplicable why, too, with all the experience these folks have. Oh, wait, explanation found, and it makes the sound of a cash register.

Conclusion: H&H could have had something really special for the old-school fans, but aside from the fantastic opener and some of the particularly addictive riffs none of it turned out as good as it could have been with a couple more months of effort on the musicians’ part. The extreme overdose of filler drags down the album tremendously and in the end it just leaves you kind of unsatisfied. A huge shame, and hopefully the band will next make an album to put their hearts in instead of one to feed their wallets. I was going to be lenient and give it a 7,5 or something but considering the status of these musicians, something much better would have been possible.

6,5 fillers out of 10 songs.

Information
Released: 2009
Label: Rhino Records
Website: www.heavenandhelllive.com
Band
Ronnie James Dio: vocals
Tony Iommi: guitars
Terrance “Geezer” Butler: bass
Vinny Appice: drums

Tracklist
01. Atom & evil
02. Fear
03. Bible black
04. Double the pain
05. Rock and roll angel
06. The turn of the screw
07. Eating the cannibals
08. Follow the tears
09. Neverwhere
10. Breaking into heaven

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