Black Sabbath - Dio Years - Music & Performance - CD

This is the first-ever compilation to exclusively spotlight the legendary band's Dio years. Spanning 1980-2006, includes 17 thunderious tracks from Black Sabbath featuring Ronnie James Dio on Lead vocals in 3 new songs. Also features essentials from '81's THE MOB RULES plus stand-outs from 1992's DEHUMANIZER and live versions of "Children of the Sea" and "Country Girl."

The original lineup of Black Sabbath possesses such a mythic quality that it's easy to overlook how far they slid by the time Ozzy Osbourne up and left the band...or how far they rebounded after they hired Rainbow singer Ronnie James Dio as his replacement. Countless compilations over the years have preserved the initial part of the story line -- celebrating the innovations of the first four albums with a near fetishistic quality -- but there has never been a good retrospective concerning the Dio years until Rhino released the aptly titled The Dio Years in early 2007. True, the Dio years didn't last all that long -- the singer joined in 1980 for Heaven & Hell, then lasted through one more studio album, the following year's Mob Rules, before departing under a shroud of controversy after 1982's botched live album Live Evil -- but Dio had a powerful impact upon the band and its legacy; these were the last years that Sabbath exerted pull as an active band, and after his departure they stumbled through various singers over the next decade before intermittently reuniting with Ozzy in the '90s. The Dio Years proves that during his brief time with the band, Dio did help Sabbath make music that could hold its own with some of the classic lineup's finest moments. With Dio as a frontman, the band was harder, nastier, and a little faster than the slow sludge of the early Sabbath records, but it fit in nicely with the New Wave of British Heavy Metal at the beginning of the '80s and it's aged very well. Some of it can sound silly -- Dio's lyrical obsessions always do -- but this is harder, heavier, better music than either Technical Ecstasy or Never Say Die! Anybody who's refused to give this latter-day incarnation of the band the time of day might find this compilation revelatory. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

Performer	Black Sabbath
Music genre	Rock
Music subgenre	Heavy
Music release type	Release
Media format	CD
Original release date	2007
Edition	Rmst ed.
Language	English
Is collectible	Y
Number of tracks	17
Has parental advisory label	N
Number of discs	1
Series title	Black Sabbath - Dio Years [CD]
Track listing	Neon Knights, Lady Evil, Heaven & Hell, Die Young, Lonely Is the Word, The Mob Rules, Turn Up the Night, Voodoo, Falling Off the Edge of the World, After All (The Dead), TV Crimes, I, Children of the Sea (Live), The Devil Cried, Shadow of the Wind, Ear in the Wall
Record label	Warner Bros Uk
Songwriter	Black Sabbath
Track name	Neon Knights, Lady Evil, Heaven and Hell, Die Young, Lonely Is the Word, The Mob Rules, Turn Up the Night, Voodoo, Falling Off the Edge of the World, After All (The Dead), TV Crimes, I, Children of the Sea, The Devil Cried, Shadow of the Wind, Ear in the Wall
Music media format	CD
Is edited	N
Is enhanced	N