Heaven and Hell

For those of you who aren’t aware of who Heaven and Hell are, they are band with some people that you may possibly have heard of... Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, Vinnie Appice and Ronnie James Dio, who just in case you didn’t know used to be in Black Sabbath or should I say were Black Sabbath during 1980-1982.

If I’m completely honest this part of Sabbaths history is not something I can remember. I am a fan of the Ozzy Osbourne fronted Black Sabbath and the thought of anyone else in his place just doesn’t seem right.


However Tony Iommi (who is also the owner of the Black Sabbath name) in his wisdom decided to tour without Ozzy this time around and invited Mr Dio back to tour under the name ‘Heaven and Hell’, which was coincidentally the name of the Black Sabbath album, which Ronnie Dio was the vocalist for.

The audience mainly consisted of middle aged, grey-bearded, beer-bellied, old school rockers, who were clearly in the mood for some serious rock music. The old vast metal shed, known as the Nottingham Arena was barely half-full, which I’m sure would not have been the case had Ozzy been with the band. It would have been absolutely packed.

As the venue was plunged into total darkness for the arrival of this legendary rock group, then slowly and with a stage presence that can only be gained by years and years of hard graft, the band members took their positions and the haunting intro to “E5150” starting to reverberate through the chilly arena.



Then Ronnie Dio made his way to centre stage and easily mesmerised the audience with his stage presence. It felt like he was as much a part of Sabbath as Ozzy was.

After hearing and watching Mr Dio perform it was clear that technically he is a better vocalist than Ozzy, and in some ways it was disheartening to know that Ronnie just doesn’t receive the same type of admiration that Ozzy gets.

This time around there didn’t seem to be any egotistical rock star behaviour, if anything all of the band members seemed to be quite humble and just kept ploughing through their setlist without too much razzmatazz.

As you can imagine, they played most of the tracks from Heaven and Hell, well what do you expect when the tour is called ‘The Dio Years?’ As always ‘Die Young’ and ‘Heaven and Hell’ and even ‘Neon Knights’ were all crowd pleasers.


Even Vinnie Appice had chance to show his mindblowing drumming skills during his very own drum solo, which usually are very dull and boring. Thankfully this one was entertaining and a pleasure to see.

All of their songs from the Dio days were played to perfection and although they might be heading towards their pension, these guys still know how to put other bands to shame. Even after all of these years it is easy to see why Black Sabbath are one of those bands that have deserved their space in the ‘Rock Legends’ category.

Best of all, they didn’t even try to cover any of the material that they recorded with Ozzy, and lets be honest it would have been quite easy for them to have belted out ‘Warpigs’ or ‘Paranoid’, just so that the audience could hear some of Sabbaths classic golden oldies.

FUTURE GIGS

sorry, we currently have no gigs listed for this act.