Re-Visiting Dio

[Gruno]

“Killing The Dragon”

My 2nd favorite from the post-80s Dio catalog.

[Rick Robson]

And then they wanted him to at least keep the bass line during the verses of "Heaven and Hell" but he did not like that bass part at all and found it too "simple." Nichols apparently came up with that bass riff and they used to jam on it for hours. I guess in the end they convinced Geezer that it really works for that song. Hard to imagine that song without it.

Interesting to know that fact about the bass line, which could not be great to Geezer but indeed great to my ears. I'm still thinking it was more probably conceived by Tony on his writing with Dio, as it was pretty comparable to those bass lines so characteristically featured on a fair bunch of Sabbath songs (*) - like Iron Man, Children of the Grave, War Pigs, to name a few - would those then sound "simple" to Geezer Butler?

Man, the title track to H&H is a freaking MONSTER track even after all these years. The way that song is developed, arranged and then peaks with that finale into the quiet nylon string outro!? Wow!

I agree with you about dynamics, but they still had it even if the overall sound was more streamlined. "Die Young" has dynamic shifts all over it!

As it happens, there is a new interview with Tony about H&H that just came out on TeamRock today:

http://teamrock.com/feature/2016-09-...eaven-and-hell

Yes indeed the track H&H is all that to me too, and tend to agree with you about the album as a whole, one that will forever remain as a memorable classic Hard Rock record.

Thanks for the link, interesting to read about Dio's feelings about H&H, saying that it was his favourite work on his entire career. On other sort of things, I would like to find much more live performances of 'Lonely Is The Word'...

* EDIT: That kind of characteristical BS bass line was already used even earlier on the track 'Thomas James' (1969 Demo record), exactly the same that was later used on the track 'Black Sabbath'.

[klothos]

Magica is my favorite post-80s Dio release.

Just listened to that this morning while jogging.......First time i ever heard it and its pretty damn good, even if its slightly dated sounding in areas.....No songs really stood out but the overall album as an entire entity was quite good

[SteveSly]

Just listened to that this morning while jogging.......First time i ever heard it and its pretty damn good, even if its slightly dated sounding in areas.....No songs really stood out but the overall album as an entire entity was quite good

I believe he originally intended it to be a trilogy of 3 albums that continued the story. Of course that never happened, but yea I would say Magica is by far his most ambitious project. It works more as a whole than individual songs.