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(More customer reviews)When I started listening to Black Sabbath in 1981, Ronnie James Dio was the current vocalist, and Mob Rules was the current album. So I'm familiar - very familiar - with the first 13 songs on this CD. When Black Sabbath got back together with Ozzy in 1997, I figured that was pretty much it, the Dio Years (and the others, too) would be gone forever. Well, fortunately in 2006, the word came down that there would be a compilation CD (this one) in 2007 based off of "The Dio Years" of Black Sabbath. Dio's two previous tenures in the band produced three studio albums, and one live album. This CD is a decent cross section of the tunes from those three albums.
Like any other compilation album, there's always someone's personal choices as to what they think should have been left off, and put on. I would have personally left off "I" and replaced it with "Computer God", which is a far better song. I also would have put the studio version of "Children of the Sea" on here, instead of the version from "Live Evil". Perhaps also replacing Lonely is the Word with "Time Machine". But that didn't happen. The 13 older songs here are all great (except for maybe the live version of Children of the Sea). You can't go wrong with this compilation.
But this isn't just a simple compilation. There's three new songs. They are "The Devil Cried", "Shadow of the Wind", and "Ear in the Wall". During Interviews, Tony Iommi said of the three new songs "There's one for everybody - a medium one, a slow one, and a fast one". He's right. The songs are that distinctive to me. Ear is my favorite of the three, it evokes memories of "Neon Knights", one of the best Dio era tracks. Shadow of the Wind is your usual slow powerful Black Sabbath track, and "Devil Cried" is a good track as well musically. I'm not terribly fond of the lyrics, though. They cross the line into cheese for me, but the song behind them is quite good. It's a mixed bag, that one.
As a whole, this compilation is well worth it, especially for the remastered versions of the tracks. The three albums that the compilation draws from were from 1980, 1981, & 1992. The Dehumanizer stuff from 1992 doesn't sound a whole lot different to my ears, but the Heaven & Hell stuff from 1980 sounds miles clearer than the old print, and the Mob Rules stuff from 1981 is much cleaned up too. Then you add in the three new tracks, and it's a good compilation, not just a shovel job to fill out a CD.
In fact, if you couple this CD with two other Black Sabbath compilation CD's, you can get a very good cross section of the whole of the entire history of Black Sabbath. The other two would be "Symptom of the Universe", a 2 CD package that covers the 8 studio Ozzy albums from 1970-1978, and then "The Sabbath Stones", a 1996 compilation that mostly covers the Tony Martin Era from 1987-1995, but also touches the Ian Gillan album in 1983 (Born Again), and the Glenn Hughes album in 1986 (Seventh Star). Take the three of these together, and you will get an extremely good cross section of the 18 studio albums Black Sabbath has released over the years.
As an added final note to this hardcore Sabbath fan, I loved the fact that the drum kit on the tracks used to belong to Cozy Powell. Vinny Appice plays on the tracks, but the kit used belonged to Cozy - these were recorded in the studio in Tony Iommi's house. I liked that. A lot.
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Honoring the time Ronnie Dio spent with the band, BlackSabbath's hits "Neon Knights," "Lady Evil," and "Die Young" are featured onthis compilation spanning 1980-2006. David Ling contributes liner notes andlive versions of "Children of the Sea" and "Country Girl" are showcased.
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