DIO: Holy Diver (HARD ROCK): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

1982: Black Sabbath released the live testimony of its two collaborations with Ronnie James Dio, a singer with a talent inversely proportional to his size and who competes with a certain David Coverdale for the first place in the annual rankings of the best hard-rock singer.

Two years earlier, Black Sabbath took a radical change of direction under the influence of this Rainbow defector. And if, on stage, Dio comes out with the honors of his personal interpretation of the black band's classics, the atmosphere backstage does not bode well for the future. It must be said that the strong personalities of Tommy Iommi and Dio are not likely to allow the necessary distance from the growing success of this band. So they squabble cheerfully, sometimes to the detriment of the fans, proof of which is the production of Live Evil which will put forward the founders of the group.

1983: after having slammed the door of Black Sabbath and having taken with him the drummer Vinnie Appice, Ronnie James Dio decides to fly of his own wings and thus founds his own group. In the process, the man assumes his excess of personality and gives the band its own name: Dio.

The question then remains to know if, like Rainbow which had a hard time to rise with a Graham Bonnet who did not convince, the fans will follow or will rather remain faithful to a group which has just recruited a certain Ian Gillan (all this giving unfortunately the impression that the hard-rock turns around the only Deep Purple and Black Sabbath) As an answer, Dio then releases a "Holy Diver" which, by the cover, seems to announce a Black Sabbath clone.

And from the first track, Ronnie James Dio gives us the motto that will remain his for many years: 'get up and shout!' From the first track, the tone is clear: the Dio era will have the color of a rainbow bathed in the darkness of a black mass. And the result will be beyond the wildest hopes, the fans rushing to his concerts by hordes.

After this first punch in the face, the album unfolds a series of tracks of a very high level and directly effective, like the title track as well as "Don't Talk To Strangers" or "Straight Through The Heart" which will become typical of the Dio style, all at the service of an exceptional voice and succeeding in the musical marriage of the heavy riff and the electric energy proper to this style.

Beside that, Ronnie James Dio let himself go to songs with a more "pop" melody and construction, such as "Caught In The Middle" and especially "Rainbow In The Dark" which may seem more dispensable to the youngest among us but which will have, in this year 1983, allowed the band to establish its position as new leader of the genre.

Following this first try, Dio will bring the last missing element to his new monument by recruiting for the second album a keyboard which is cruelly missing in this first opus and which will allow this formation to be really complete, then to create a second opus up to the promises of the first one. But that's another story... - Official website

DIO

HOLY DIVER

WARNER

HARD ROCK