HEAVEN AND HELL - The Devil You Know

By R. Brian Hastie - Drive Home: Countdown To Armageddon - 04/28/2009

It is often hard to come up with the right words to describe heavy metal music. The words 'crushing', 'brutal' and 'dark' are often conjured up from the heads of writers… they are the go-to choices that evoke cheap imagery and simple cop-outs. Sometimes, though, these words are necessary evils that genuinely reflect the music, and in The Devil You Know's case, these words also manage to reflect the package as a whole. The word dark, in particular, matches the thematic qualities of the album.

Heaven and Hell (perhaps better known to the masses as Black Sabbath circa Mob Rules, substituting Ozzy Osbourne and drummer Bill Ward for the mighty Ronnie James Dio and skinman Vinnie Appice) have managed to put out 10-song set of semi-remarkable, though interchangeable tunes. From the very first beat of album opener Atom & Evil, the band chugs along at a medium pace, never speeding up or slowing down, moving as a singular, tired-sounding unit.

The big problem is the fact that H&H tread too deep into familiar waters, borrowing liberally from the three records put out while Dio fronted the band in order to make an album that is recognizable yet completely pedestrian, devoid of any true exploration that could make this release enjoyable. The comfort in the familiar is abundant, as drummer Appice's roomy drums and Tony Iommi's familiar guitar tone are immediately noticeable and identifiable to anyone who's spent 2 minutes with any of their prior records.

The theatricality of Dio's vocal delivery are in full force as he delivers the stories he's concocted, his favourite themes (mortality, the perils of the unknown and the questionning that comes with religious faith) humbly served up as if he were a priest in front of a jet black pulpit. The lyrics and Dio's delivery add a pseudo-mystical element to the music, a darkness that stands in stark contrast to Ozzy, the band's other longest-running singer. He and co-lyricist Bill Ward spoke of present problems through thinly-veiled metaphors, while Dio is head-over-heels steeped deep in the fantasy realm, a world of devils and magic, a world where stories are much more important than the facts they're based upon.

Iommi's seemingly given up on trying to re-find The Riff, the memorable and catchy piece of music that sets the tone for the rest of the song. He takes a backseat to Dio's vocal gymnastics, offering a musical counterpart that Dio's soaring vocals can match up with. Instead of anything truly original, Iommi instead serves up muscular slabs of sustaining chords and the occasional great solo. Workmanlike would be an apt description for his contribution to the album, far from the heights he achieved in the first 10 years of the band's existence, churning out riffs that defined a genre ('Paranoid', 'Iron Man', and 'Snowblind' are but a few) and instead resigns himself to hiding in the background, only coming out to shine during a few moments (the intro to '’Follow The Tears’' comes to mind).

It's not that this is a bad record, because it evidently isn't, it just has all of the markings of a band unsure on how to please themselves and their fans, so they stick to a familiar formula that doesn't deviate from prior material…creating a familiar yet boring release.