Heaven and Hell
Glasgow SECC, 6th November 2007
Dio has rocked for a long, long time... He has songs of wildebeests and angels. He has soared on the wings of a demon. And now he's back on the road, with Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Vinny Appice, under the guise of Heaven and Hell, playing Dio-era Sabbath tunes for the masses.
Support comes in the form of American mini-Maiden power metallers Iced Earth. Ian's quite a fan, but since when did we ever manage to get to the SECC in time to see the first act? A pity, as the last couple of songs we catch (both from the new album, Framing Armageddon) sound pretty damned good.
'Show us your horns… Dio's watching!' Okay, I won't pretend I actually sat through Lamb of God's 40 minute set of Slayer-esque, heads down, no-nonsense thrash – but apparently they were good if you like that sort of thing…
So, onto the main event. A black curtain shrouds the stage, hiding untold gumbieness, while a select, predominantly Saga-age male audience (there's actually tumbleweed blowing through the ladies' loos) waits patiently. The curtain drops, to reveal a suitably gothic set of gas lamps, arching cathedral doors and Exorcist-style railings, set against a brick wall onto which skulls, hooded creatures, flames and other Sabbath-esque images are projected. And then they're there, looking slightly thin around the follicles but musically all present and correct: the godfathers of heavy metal, Black Sabbath. And Ronnie James Dio.
With Ozzy something of a national treasure these days, wheeled out at state events like a palsied, blinged up version of the Queen Mum, it's easy to forget that Black Sabbath were, for a time, fronted by elfin rock goblin Dio. But unlike his Brummie predecessor, Dio is still very much all there, springing around the stage like a leprechaun, his lungs as powerful as ever, belting out a selection of classics from the Mob Rules and Heaven and Hell albums (plus a new track from the forthcoming Black Sabbath: The Dio Years collection, 'Shadows of the Wind', which is hardly a departure from the ponderous, bass-heavy metal Sabbath specialise in). Hell, Dio can even remember the words without needing the audience to prompt him.
Stand out tracks of the night for me were definitely a 'Sign of the Southern Cross' so heavy you could feel it in your gut, a melodic 'Falling Off The Edge of the World' and of course the 'title track', 'Heaven and Hell' – until it segued off into an endless jam session and got a bit tedious. The down point was definitely the drum solo. Why? Why?
Technically an outstanding performance, there did seem to be something lacking in the night: perhaps it was the somewhat underwhelmed reaction from the audience, or the fact that, well, all the songs are a bit the same, plodding along on metal cloven hooves, albeit carried by Iommi's superb guitar wizardry and Dio's enormous voice. Still, it was an unmissable opportunity to witness the history of heavy metal in the flesh. Time to hand over the cape and sceptre? Perhaps not yet.
