Heaven & Hell

Check the new Album HEAVEN & HELL-THE DEVIL YOU KNOW

TONY IOMMI, GEEZER BUTLER, RONNIE JAMES DIO and VINNIE APPICE are metal giants that walk the Earth. Sabbath in all but name, they’ve just written the heaviest album of the year. Thank fuck for drunken conversations in Japan.

It’s funny how things work out.  The year is 2009 and of the most exciting new bands on the planet has just released their debut album. It’s one of the heaviest things you’ll hear this year and makes a lot of other over-hyped metal records sound turgid and uninspired by comparison. Oddly, however, its creators have a collective age of well over 220. Two of the band’s members are frequently cited as being broadly responsible for inventing heavy metal in the first place, while the band’s singer has  sung on at least three albums that are universally regarded as cast-iron classics and, it is often alleged, single-handedly popularised the use of the ‘devil’s horns’ hand gesture in metal. Most bizarrely, despite having constructed a rich musical legacy together under a different name, they have spent large portions of the last two decades not really talking to each other at all after well-publicised and unfortunate squabbles that threatened to put an end to the collaboration once and for all. Some bands have a bit of history to recount. Heaven & Hell - or Black Sabbath, as they were originally known- are metal history. And now they’re back to teach the new generation of bands and fans a thing or two about making music that matters. For singer Ronnie James Dio and guitarist Tony Iommi, this is plainly a case of unfinished business, and as far they’re concerned, their band is better than ever.

“We’ve seen enough bands come back after prolonged layoffs,” states Dio. “Usually you see that when there’s a reformation there, you think, ‘So how much money do they think they’re going to make on this one?’ Those bands are not viable. They don’t count. They’re doing it for their own benefit, which is completely and totally untrue in this case. This shows that no matter how many years pass between this collaboration and these people, it’s always going to be a great product. It’ll always be great. This is a great band.”

“We were on the piss in Japan, and I slurred to Ronnie, ‘Fancy doing an album?’ it was that simple”- Tony Iommi.

Heaven & Hell take their name from the first album that they- minus drummer Vinnie Appice, but plus original Sabbath man Bill Ward- made together in 1980. An instant success that revived the band’s fortunes following the departure of Ozzy Osbourne at the end of the previous decade, it was an album that gave the Black Sabbath name a new lease of life and kick-started a song writing partnership between guitarist Tony Iommi and Ronnie James Dio that, were it not for those rather calamitous fallings out, could easily have outstripped the band’s earlier, more frequently feted incarnation. A second album, the brilliant Mob Rules followed a couple of years later, now with Appice on board. Another, the often overlooked Dehumanizer, emerged in 1992 when the band settled their differences, gave the whole thing another shot and then abruptly fell out again. It wasn’t until some bright spark came up with the idea of commemorating ‘The Dio Years’ with a snazzy box set that it was suggested that it might be quite cool if the band could contribute a new tune or two to make the project more than a mere rehash of past glories. As a result, the hatchet was buried and Iommi, Dio, Butler and Appice were reunited in 2006, recorded three new songs for the box set and, flushed by a positive response, embarked on an ecstatically received world tour in 2007, now under the name Heaven & Hell, a move seemingly designed to avoid any unnecessary treading on toes belonging to anyone with the surname Osbourne. The change of name has been a blessing in disguise, and one that has enabled these veteran musicians to re-launch themselves as an entirely new concern.

“I think it’s been a positive thing,” states Iommi. “I suppose it takes a bit of the pressure off. If we’d gone out as Black Sabbath we’d be playing Iron Man, Paranoid and Black Sabbath, of course, because you’ve got to play some of those songs. We really wanted to go out and play the songs we hadn’t played for a long time, the Ronnie stuff, and it worked really well. It was taking a big risk, because we had a different name, but it’s caught on fairly quick.”

“This album had to be done just to prove that yeah, we were that good for all those years” – Ronnie James Dio

“I, like everyone else, assumed that we’d be going out as Black Sabbath because we were Black Sabbath,” says Dio, “But then it was suggested that we call it something else. Of course, I scratched my head and thought, ‘What the hell are we gonna call it?’, but I honestly didn’t care. But now, with hindsight, I think it was a good idea, it put a fresh stamp on something that everybody knew was Black Sabbath anyway, so you had the connection there already.”

Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler spent much of the 90s and the first few years of this decade performing regularly as Black Sabbath with Ozzy Osbourne, and although many people would have been glad to hear some new music from the band’s original line-up, it never really looked likely. But it didn’t take anyone very long to realise that Heaven & Hell was destined to be much more than an opportunity to trot out some old favourites and wait for the pay cheque to arrive. Anyone who saw the band on their UK tour will testify to the fact that they were obviously on glorious form and clearly up to the task of honouring their legacy with a new album. By the end of the tour, it was obvious to the band too.

This man started Heavy Metal. Kneel before him !!! <><><><>
Tony Iommi! 

“I remember it distinctively,” grins Iommi. “We were in Japan at the end of the tour, and we wnet out for a meal, and we were sitting around, a bit pissed, and I slurred to Ronnie and the others, ‘Do you fancy doing an album?’ and it was as simple as that, really. After the tour, we had a little bit of a break and then I started writing stuff and they all did too. Everything built from there.”

Even given the achievements of its creators, Heaven & Hell’s debut,’ The Devil You Know is a remarkable piece of work. A monstrously dark heavy metal record that frequently strays into authentic doom territory- a mildly ironic state of affairs, given that the genre wouldn’t exist without Sabbath- it’s far heavier and more intense than anyone could seriously expect from a band of this vintage, and yet there’s an undeniable sense that somehow this is precisely what Iommi and Dio should be doing in 2009. Unlike many bands from the early days of heavy music, these are men that have never lost sight of what makes a great metal record and how the genre continues to evolve and reshape itself along the way.

“It seems almost as though this album had to be done just to prove one last time that ‘Yeah, they were that good for all those years, huh?’” laugh Dio. “I’m not saying that this spells the end of the band, because one never knows with this lot anyway and I don’t think that’s going to happen at all. But again, I think it was a necessary album, for the fans and for us. Probably more necessary for us.”

“We’re really happy with the record,” adds Iommi. “We had to try and represent the band at its best. With Ronnie, we’re capable a lot more musical stuff than we did with Ozzy. It’s more involved. And right now, I’ve got riffs coming out of my ears; we’ve got for another bloody record!”

“Having spawned an entire genre with his unique riffs, Tony Iommi has got little to prove, but somehow he seems to have excelled himself on The Devil You Know, with some of the gnarliest and most crushing songs he’s ever penned. What makes the album all the more impressive is the way the riffs are more than matched by Dio’s predictably stunning vocals and lyrics, all of which add to an overall atmosphere of doom-laden grandeur. Whether he’s drawing a parallel between the Garden of Eden and the dropping of the H-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Atom And Evil or exposing mankind’s quietly terrified internal monologue in Fear, Dio is evidently not full of the joys of spring right now and the intensity of his emotive observations practically leaps from the speakers and starts clawing at your face. This is seriously dark shit, Ronnie...

“Yeah, I suppose it is,” he says. “The state of the world is going to be my state of mind anyway, so that’s obviously there. Take the song Eating The Cannibals; it’s saying that government has kind of screwed up. They’ve messed up to a point, especially here, that has now affected everywhere and everyone. It’s just always the promise of something and never the return and I just thought, ‘I’m going to open a restaurant and we’re going to serve them, so we can eat the cannibals.’ The song Atom And Evil is a reflection of how I think power can be misconstrued and used for the negative instead of the positive. Bible Black and Fear say loads about the dark side of everything. Neverwhere does the same.”

If we didn’t know so much about the men behind The Devil You Know, we could be forgiven for thinking that it’s the work of a much younger band. There’s little to suggest that this is anyone’s last hurrah or the tired stumbling of a band past its prime. It’s a record that stands up against everything else that’s out there in 2009 and whether that’s attributable to the fact that Iommi and Dio are more than aware of what’s going on elsewhere in the metal scene, or to the fact that their sound is as timeless as it is familiar, Heaven & Hell look certain to inspire a whole new generation of bands and fans.

“Seeing the young metal bands when we tour with them at festivals, seeing them crowd around the stage if they’re allowed to go up there to see the band play, it’s pretty phenomenal to me,” enthuses Dio. “They’re all incredibly respectful and so happy that they’re on the same bill and they can’t wait to compliment you and thank you for the things that you’ve done. That’s what being a musician all is about. It’s a nice challenge. You have to play for your peers too.”

Have you ever noticed how many bands explode into view with a storming debut album before careering rapidly downhill with a succession of disappointment follow-ups, before losing the plot completely and, to no fanfare whatsoever, splitting up? The good thing about Heaven & Hell, the coolest new band on the planet, is this heavy metal lark, and they know more about how to make their music count than any other band. As a result, whether they stick around for more after their forthcoming world tours at this stage, but don’t bet against it- or go their separate ways to pursue other worthwhile projects, the simple fact is that Heaven & Hell have nothing to prove, but they’re proving it anyway.

“We have a much better relationship than we ever did before and everyone is 100 per cent into what we’re doing,” concludes Iommi. “Everyone cares about going on stage and making good show. That’s what I like, that professionalism, Ronnie’s so professional. He can’t stand not to do his best. I like that attitude, and it goes for everybody. It’s nice, at our age, to be this enthusiastic. Its brilliant. We believe in what we do and we’re enjoying every minute.”

METAL MILESTONES

 THE DEVIL YOU KNOW isn’t the first classic album these men have been involved in...

Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath

{VERTIGO, 1970}

Heavy metal’s grand opening ceremony. Tony Iommi’s first riff on this album started it all. Utterly fucking essential.

Black Sabbath

Master of Reality

{VERTIGO, 1971}

The most flawless album of the Ozzy era, this contains an insane number of moments of genius from Iommi and co.

Rainbow

Rising

{POLYDOR, 1976}

Ronnie James Dio teams up with ex-Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and creates the most epic rock record of the 70s.

Black Sabbath

Heaven & Hell

{VERTIGO, 1980}

An electrifying meeting of minds, as Sabbath are reborn with Dio at the microphone. The start of a glorious relationship.

Dio

Holy Diver

{VERTIGO, 1983}

Estranged from Sabbath for the first time, Dio goes it alone and creates one of metal’s crown jewels at the first attempt. Look out!