• AllMyVinyl #67
• Band: Black Sabbath
• Album Title: The Devil You Know
• Release Date: 27 Apr 2009
• Date purchased: N/A
• Location purchased: Record label
• Color of vinyl: black
• Number of discs: 2
• Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | My Website | Complete album on Youtube ]

First off, let me get this out of the way first.  I’m fully aware this album was produced, sold, and marketed as “Heaven & Hell”, not Black Sabbath. I know that.  You know that. But we both know this is REALLY the Dio era of Black Sabbath.  When this was first announced I had someone I know alter the cover art to say Black Sabbath (and I’ll take about the cover art later).  But through this article, I know it’s really “Heaven & Hell” and not Black Sabbath – technically & legally.  I don’t care – I”m calling it Black Sabbath.  Deal with it.  :)

OK, with that out of the way…  This is the final album for Ronnie James Dio in any band.  After the tour for this was over, there was talk of another album, and Ronnie had done some preliminary work on a “Magica II” album, but none of it ever progressed very far, as Ronnie got sick and died the following year in 2010.  I’m not going to spend a lot of time on that, but I don’t think I could NOT say anything either.

After Ozzfest 2005, the band decided to continue forward, but wanted to bring back Ronnie James Dio – they did, and for a brief moment, they had put together the Heaven & Hell (1980 album) lineup – with Bill Ward.  However, due to a disagreement on drums, Ward departed, and they brought back Vinnie Appice.  This was for a couple of new tracks for the 2007 compilation “The Dio Years”.  They recorded three songs (The Devil Cried, Shadow of the Wind, & Ear in the Wall).  They had such a good time doing those, that they went out on tour together.  This tour then produced the live album “Live at Radio City Music Hall” (and Blu-Ray).  This of course led to the eventual studio album I’m doing today – “The Devil You Know” – the fourth studio album by the Dio incarnation of Black Sabbath.  When they went from Heaven & Hell / Mob Rules to Dehumanizer, the general vibe of that album was heavier than the first two.  This one is even heavier than that in my opinion.  It also leaves heavily into Sabbath’s stereotype of “evil band” by having well, THAT cover art, and a song called “Bible Black” as well as ones called “Atom and Evil” and “Breaking Into Heaven”.

When this came out, my Sabbath site was well established, and everything the band releases I get set gratis – so I had copies of the album sent to me on CD & vinyl.  In fact, I didn’t ask for the vinyl, they just sent it.  Had they asked I probably would have declined, because in 2009 I had no way to play a record, but I’m glad they did, because I have it today, and it will get played.

Before I get into the tunes, I wanted to talk about the cover art.  As I mentioned on the Dehumanizer article, this album’s cover art already existed before it was used by the band for the cover – just like the cover art for Heaven & Hell and Mob Rules existed before Sabbath used it.  This art was done by a Norwegian artist named Per Øyvind Haagensen – it was titled simply “Satan”.  You can view the original here.  It absolutely fit in to the overall Sabbath mythos – of all the cover art they’ve had it’s the one I find personally… not offensive, but “yeah, I don’t care for that”.  One can easily get away with calling it “intense”.  :) Also Walmart didn’t like it, because they refused to stock the album with that cover art, so an alternate was needed.  It was basically just the 25/41 Henry art blown up to be full size.  I’ve included a copy of the image for that below.

Also on the cover was something that garnered a good story for me to tell.  It’s well known that I have done websites and social media for the guys – one of which is Geezer Butler. I was emailing him about something or other at the time, and asked what the numbers around Henry were.  Specifically the 25 & 41 that appear to the left and right of Henry on the front cover.  Geezer told me “Of all people, YOU should know what that means”.  So I went off and gave it a thought.  Turns out it’s a reference to a bible verse.  Specifically “Matthew 25:41”, which says.. “Then he will say to those on his left – depart from me you who are used into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels”.   While Geezer didn’t put that there for me (he did do that on the 13 album tho), I loved the story – so I used it to create a page on my Sabbath site about religion, my personal testimony, and others in rock who aren’t afraid of their religious beliefs.  If you go to the front page of my Sabbath site, click on the bottle cap with Henry on it, you’ll see the page.

Before I start with the actual songs, I wanted to mention the actual vinyl for a minute.  It is a double vinyl, but it’s not long enough to fill four sides.  The music only goes on three sides.  The fourth side is etched art.  I have a picture of that at the bottom of my article here.  It’s basically the 25/41 Henry art from the front cover etched into the vinyl.  Looks cool.  Part of me wishes there was a secret message embedded in there you could play on the vinyl.  It can’t be good for my needle to try playing the etched artwork, so I never have.  hahaha.  :)

Anyway, to the music.

Atom and Evil – Oddly for an album opener, I thought this was a down track – probably my least favorite on the album.  It’s hard to say anything on a Black Sabbath album is actively bad, and it isn’t.  But this never really gets going for me.   Not like something on the order of “Buried Alive” – but this never grabs me.  It does have a super heavy riff to start off the album – classic Iommi for sure.  Even Iommi’s solo on this one isn’t the best he’s done.  Fortunately the rest of the album is better than the opening track.  That heavy opening riff shows up towards the end again.  Oddly the guitar sound that Tony plays during the fadeout I found more interesting – wish there was more of that.

Fear – Things pick up immediately with “Fear”.  While I like this song a lot, my favorite part was the way Ronnie song the word “Fear” in the song.  It’s not just him. It’s manipulated digitally to create an effect I don’t think Ronnie can actually sing (layered echoing?).  Ronnie can sing well, and always has, but my gut says that effect was assisted.  Either way I loved the way it sounds.  Tony’s primary riff on this pretty killer too.  I would have put this song first on the album.

Bible Black – This song is amazing.  It sounds like something that could have easily slotted into Mob Rules.  It’s got that kind of vibe to me.  I also love you can hear Geezer quite easily – especially in the earlier parts before the full band and all the power kicks in.  My religious beliefs aren’t the most comfortable with the lyrics, but musically this song is a masterpiece.  Love the guitar work, all of it.  Speaking of lyrics, I adore the line of lyric that says “Hungry for another bite of wrong”.  I love the sound of that – similar to Floyd’s “Just an Earthbound misfit I”.  Same feel to me.  Great song front to back.

There was a video produced for it – I remember there was this scheduled world premiere for it.  Eddie Trunk had this recorded intro for the thing (forget where now, it certainly wasn’t MTV – Youtube maybe?)  Anyway, the video game out, and it was this animated..  uh..  I’m struggling to think of a way to describe it other than a complete piece of shit.  It was awful.  Was this animated thing – and well..  I’ve included it below on my blog page.  It’s awful.  At the time I looked up the company that made the video, and discovered they did NOT list it as an example of their work on their own website.  It was pretty bad.  A little bit later a fan video came out that was quite well done, I’ve included that below on my page, too.

Double the Pain – “Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Geezer Butler!!”  Geez starts off this song with a bass riff, something that doesn’t happen enough and is always welcome.  That always sets the tone for something heavy.  While it’s not face melting heavy, it’s got a good grove – I also love the guitar sound during the solo – can be described as something I can think of as “flutter”.  The bass riff makes an appearance 3/4 of the way through again.  A song that doesn’t get the attention it should, but there’s some good stuff across the board on this one.

Rock and Roll Angel – Eh.. Some of the Dio band songs from the past had song titles like this – “Rock & Roll Children”, and that’s kind of biased me towards songs with the title of “Rock & Roll whatever”.  It just feels like cringe just looking at it.  In fact the song itself has a sound that is a bit un Sabbath like – I could EASILY see Craig Goldy playing this song.  It’s not bad at all, but not my favorite.  Much in the way people say the Dio song Hollywood Black sounded like a Sabbath song, this sounds like something the Dio band would have done.  There is a part I do like which does sound like Tony, it’s a slower part that’s almost Tony’s guitar on it’s own with very little (and much quieter parts) by the rest of the band, his guitar there sounds quite pleasant – not an in your face riff.

The Turn of the Screw – When I sat down to listen to this album, this song was a blank slate to me, I couldn’t remember anything about it.  Has some more noticeable Butler parts where there’s no lead guitar being played on top of them, so you can hear Geezer’s bas riff easily.  Always welcome.  Its’ an album track;  Not the greatest, not bad at all, enjoyed it – was tapping my feet with it.  So it works for that reason, but I can’t tell you why like I could with some other tracks.

Eating the Cannibals – This one fits the mold of songs I like.  The three and half minute long fast track.  When I’m listening to it, I swear I can hear parts of other songs along these lines I’ve heard before.  Not to say it’s ripping off something else, but it’s done in a way that speaks to ways I like other songs from the back catalog.  As far as I know this has never been played live, and when people talk about this album, they never talk about this song.  It doesn’t have the feel of something like Follow the Tears, and it’s not gonna grab people like Bible Black, but I loved this.  Great song.  Tony’s solo worked real well in this song’s structure, too.

Follow the Tears – The slower, sludge song for the album I think.  If the Dio Sabbath lineup did Volume 4, this would feel right at home there. This just sucks you in right from the start and doesn’t let go.  Great track.  Don’t mistake my lack of writing for how good it is or isn’t.  It’s great, but there’s not a ton to say – just listen to it.  You’ll get it.

Neverwhere – I was asked by someone recently what my favorite song rom this album was.  I generally tell them this one.  It’s super easy to say something like Bible Black that people know well, but I always liked this song from the start.  But I opted for this. Although when I listened to it this time, I have to say I liked Cannibals more.  Might have changed my

Breaking in to Heaven – First off, there’s a part of Tony’s guitar work here that gets repeated a few times in here that I’m 100% sure I’ve heard him use in some other song, but right now I can’t think of what it is.  It happens RIGHT at the start of the track and is repeated a couple of times. Outside of that, it’s a great slower sludge song too, but not as slow as Tears.  Obviously not when new, but later on it always struck me as amusing that the last song on the last abut that Dio ever did was called “Breaking into Heaven”, and contains the lyrics “Oh breaking into heaven / Get ready for war / Breaking into heaven / We only want more and more and more and more”.   It’s a great way to close out the album.

They went out and toured this album, but unfortunately, the tour didn’t come through Dallas, so I didn’t see this show.  Shame.  But I did have something to do with the tour.  The last show of the tour was in Atlantic City, and a friend of mine who does acting and video work lives there.  His name is Damian – he mostly ran the forums on my Sabbath site when I had them.  Of all the things we’ve done together this was the biggest deal, IMO.  I received permission to send a film crew to this gig (Damian and a friend) who were allowed to film the band playing.  They filmed the entire first song of the set – “Mob Rules”, and then some B-roll and interview footage in and around the set.  This ended up being the only authorized video shot at what turned out to be Ronnie’s last concert EVER.  While I wasn’t there, I was proud to have put this in motion.  There’s a couple of shaky cam cel phone videos out there, but Damian’s shot footage is the only official record of Ronnie’s final concert.  I’ve included that on my page, too.  Remember when you watch it – Ronnie was sick with stomach cancer when he did this.

Thus brings to an end my remarks on the final album that Ronnie Dio ever did.  Was a great way to go out.  One always wishes there was more, but what we have is darned good.  If you haven’t listened to it in awhile, get it out and give it a spin again.