Band: Heaven And Hell
Album title: The Devil You Know
Label: Roadrunner
Distributor: CNR – Concrete Web Promotion Office
Release date: 24/04/2009
Release: CD

As you may know, Heaven And Hell is the reincarnation of Black Sabbath, Dio-fronted era (which brought us the very appreciated studio albums Heaven And Hell and Mob Rules, respectively of 1980 &nd 1981…followed by Dehumanizer in 1992)! Following the release of the Live From Radio City Music Hall CD and DVD (both reviewed by yours truly, review posted 28/08/2007), a document on the very successful tour the band undertook during that year. Obviously, the time was ripe for a new studio album, and the band members were more than willing to show that more than 15 years after they last wrote an album together, they could come back with something equally as great as what they’d come up with in the past!

To that end, the guys conveined at Tony Iommi’s home studio in England in early 2008, to begin the writing sessions for what would ultimately become this album. Different from old-time writing sessions, was that this time around everybody came together with some ideas already recorded down to cd-R, which excluded all the endless jam sessions to a great extend. During that session, the band completed the song “Breaking Into Heaven” (the album’s closing track) and put together several thoughts for other songs. During Summer the band toured again, and after that the band again came together at Dio’s home studio in Los Angeles. “Bible Black”, the album’s first epic single (also available as limited 7-inch vinyl from April 18 with a live version of “Neon Knights” as the b-side), was the first to be finished from that session (and it’s regrettably also the only track off the new album available at myspace.com/heavenandhellmusic for your pre-buying pleasure listening). In all, the band wrote 10 songs with a total of 54 minutes’ playing time, each song a delight to the ear.

The trick is, while some of the songs sink in after the initial couple of listening sessions, others will take longer for you to analyze and know all the nice little details of…which makes The Devil You Know a góód album in my book! I’ve searchhed on the Internet to find you additional audio samples, but I regret to say I found none! Still, once the album is out there (and that’s only a couple more days to go), I’m sure amazon.com will be posting samples of a couple more tracks! Great album, and more deserving to be placed in the year-lists of many a “Black Sabbath – Dio era” fan! Count me in!

98/100

Tony.