Black Sabbath - Heaven and Hell (Deluxe Edition)

Black Sabbath
Heaven and Hell (Deluxe Edition)

Sweet Jesus. This is great.

A funny thing happened in 1980. Black Sabbath were as good as dead. After the 1970 classic Paranoid went gold and platinum in pretty much every country that mattered, the band got steadily worse over the next decade. Then, as a final parting shot for the group, the one man that made them famous – Ozzy Osbourne – decided to jack it in. Boom. No more Sabbath.

That was until Ronnie James Dio, one of the most iconic voices in rock music (formerly with Elf and Rainbow), stepped in to take Ozzy’s place. And you know what? He was just as good, if not better. Heaven and Hell was the band’s first release with Dio at the helm and it paid off.

As soon as you hear the thumping riff of ‘Neon Knights’, the opening track, you realise that the new direction is here. Dio kicks in with the cracking vocal range proving that he has way more harmony than Ozzy, who was already pretty knackered after over ten years of excess. While it’s not quite the high-pitched screams of Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson, it certainly has the ability to push buttons in a way previously seen on Machine Head from Deep Purple tunes such as ‘Highway Star’ (particularly with the obscene guitar solo around two-thirds in).

From there, it just seems to get better and, in truth, it is a totally balanced record. ‘Children of the Sea’ gives a much slower approach though proves that left-handed expert guitarist Tony Iommi is nothing short of a genius.

Meanwhile, title track ‘Heaven and Hell’ will always be nothing short of a masterpiece. It was here that I learned that Dio is the only person in the world of heavy metal to do vocal justice to bass-heavy songs, and that Iommi likely sold his soul to the devil, or God himself, in exchange for the most mind-bending fretwork I’ve heard in my life (aside from Jimi Hendrix and Duane Allman, of course. I’m not drunk).

Other stand-outs include the psychedelic ‘Die Young’ and closing track ‘Lonely is the Word’, which comes off like a mixture between slow Judas Priest and prime-era Led Zeppelin (the latter in the song’s refrain sounding like an exact copy of that in ‘Stairway to Heaven’, save for slightly less impressive freehand guitar work).

Probably the best thing about the whole offering is the production quality. Dusted off for its re-release with Sanctuary/Universal and packaged with nerve-jangling live performances from the tours in 1980 and 1989, in turn producing pairs of open-air versions of ‘Children of the Sea’ and ‘Heaven and Hell’, you simply can’t argue; if you haven’t bought this already, get it now.

It’s really good value and it’s bloody brilliant. You get a nice little booklet for your troubles, giving excerpts of reviews and other promotional material from 30 years ago. It’ll likely make you buy it if you’ve got the album already, too.

So yeah. Dio is great. Black Sabbath are back at their best. Heaven and Hell is the perfect package. One of the few re-releases that’s worth it, in truth.

By Matt Gardner

Heaven and Hell (Deluxe Edition) is out now courtesy of the mega-conglomerate that is Universal.