HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: The Devil You Know – Heaven & Hell

May 23, 2024 Elliot Leaver

As far as the late, great Ronnie James Dio was concerned, it was to be a one-off. When HEAVEN & HELL – the new name for the lineup of BLACK SABBATH that had been active during 1980-82 and 1991-92 – had finished their touring schedule in 2007, he would go back to his own, eponymous band to begin producing the two sequels to 2000’s Magica album.

Before the decade was out, he was making his final studio album with Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Vinny Appice, an album that appeared 15 years ago last month on April 27^th, 2009.

The story of HEAVEN AND HELL starts in 2005, when Iommi was planning on releasing a compilation album entitled Black Sabbath – The Dio Years. Feeling there was a lack of material in the vaults to present alongside songs from the three albums produced with Dio at the microphone – Heaven & Hell, The Mob Rules and Dehumanizer – he brought Dio, Butler and original SABBATH drummer Bill Ward together to record two new tracks for the record. Ward would soon decline to rejoin, citing musical differences, opening the door for Appice’s return, and the compilation would see the light of day in 2007, the two new tracks becoming three and one song, The Devil Cried, being released as a promotional single.

An extensive world tour followed, which Classic Rock Magazine classed as ‘Comeback of the Year’, and as mentioned by Dio would have seen the four men go their separate ways upon its conclusion that November. However, prior to its start in March, both Dio and Iommi stated that future collaborations weren’t out of the question once their own commitments for 2008 were out of the way and, six months later, the quartet announced their decision to continue working together and record a brand-new studio album.

Three months after they finished touring the Metal Masters package in the States alongside JUDAS PRIEST, MOTORHEAD and TESTAMENT, HEAVEN AND HELL headed to Rockfield Studios in the Wye Valley in Wales to record their first album of material together for over a decade and a half alongside engineer Mike Exeter. Prior to this, the band had worked on tracks at Dio and Iommi’s houses, respectively and had a good six or seven songs before Metal Masters, with the other three coming along afterwards. Those ten songs would end up being all that was required – Dio told Classic Rock at the time it came together almost embarrassingly easily. “We really felt guilty,” he revealed. “I thought ‘Should this take us longer? Shouldn’t this be more difficult?’. I don’t even think we threw anything away, because everything that we had written, individually and together, was exactly what we expected it to be and what we wanted it to be.”

What The Devil You Know turned out to be was the best BLACK SABBATH album since Dehumanizer all that time ago, even if only two albums under that moniker had been released since and this wasn’t even in that name. It showed that Iommi was still capable of producing some of the biggest riffs in metal despite now being in his early 60’s and that Dio was ageing like a fine wine, his voice incredibly rich and emotive. Whether on the doom-laden Bible Black (the only single from the record), the sinister Follow The Tears with its high, gothic keyboards or the pacey Eating the Cannibals – the only song clocking in at less than four minutes – it presented a band who, for all intents and purposes, still had plenty to give. The production was also monstrous, crystal clear and giving the songs the room to breathe and crush everything in their path.

The critics were in agreement. AllMusic’s Phil Freeman compared it to Paranoid in the sense that it captured a band at the peak of its powers, but was significantly darker in feel than anything SABBATH had created. Dom Lawson went even further in Metal Hammer – giving the record 9/10, he described it as a ‘flawless doom metal masterpiece’ and proclaimed “Miss it, and you officially fail at metal”. The album would go onto win Best Album at the following year’s Golden Gods, but didn’t pick up the same gong in the annual End of Year list, finishing third behind MASTODON’s Crack The Skye (2009) and Black Gives Way to Blue by ALICE IN CHAINS.

HEAVEN AND HELL would go onto tour the album that summer, with headline shows and festival appearances that took in the likes of Hellfest, Wacken Open Air and the inaugural Sonisphere Festival at Knebworth House as main support to METALLICA. The final date was at the House of Blues in Atlantic City on August 29^th with HALESTORM as support – a show that would, tragically, be Dio’s last public appearance.

Three months later, the singer was diagnosed with stomach cancer, and, although early prognoses were favourable, he would ultimately die from the disease on May 16^th, 2010. Two months after, the three surviving HEAVEN AND HELL members headlined the inaugural High Voltage Festival at London’s Victoria Park in tribute, with DEEP PURPLE and former SABBATH frontman Glenn Hughes and MASTERPLAN singer Jørn Lande stepping in to provide vocals. Nobody, least of all Dio, would have wanted things to end this way, but to close the book on an illustrious career with an album as brilliant as The Devil You Know has, in hindsight, proved a fitting swansong.