ROCKET REVIEW: HEAVEN AND HELL – “The Devil You Know” (CD)

This album is the return of Tony Iommi’s legendary Black Sabbath guitar sound, last not heard from since 1992’s “Dehumanizer”. The riffs are all-out doom and purely epic, mixed brilliantly with Ronnie James Dio’s skyscraper-climbing vocals that amaze me more than anything, because while most metal singers seem to lose their explosiveness at this point in their career, Dio – at 66 – seems to have stored all his power and energy for the very end. He sounds eerily ghostly and from another world on the first track entitled “Atom and Evil”. His legendary howl only gets better with the next rockers “Fear” and “The Bible Black”, and I cannot help but throw the devil horns high in the air on track four “Double The Pain” and its totally demonic bass guitar opening from Geezer Butler. Iommi’s passion is no more evident than on the following tracks: “Rock and Roll Angel”, “The Turn of The Screw”, and “Eating The Cannibals”, with a stellar drumming performance turned in – beat by beat – by Vinny Appice. If you are an old school metal head, you would be doing yourself a serious injustice by not locking yourself up someplace alone where you can just sit back and crank up the volume to eleven for this high-octane, barn burner… mind you, from a group of wealthy senior citizens that many thought would have just cashed it all in long ago. For the younger pups, you need to spend forty-five minutes away from worrying about your hairdo (and all the gel you’re about to put in it today) and educate you and yours to the way heavy metal is truly done right by Heaven And Hell.

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