Black Sabbath – Dio Years Deluxe Editions

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Universal Music
Produced by Martin Birch

The newest in a long line of deluxe editions and coinciding, perhaps not unexpectedly, with the 30th anniversary of their first album together, these three releases are the albums produced by Black Sabbath with Ronnie James Dio on vocals in the early 1980s before their 1992, and 2007 reunions.

Although expanded to two CDs in each case, the interest here for anyone who already owns these albums ranges from little to none. Which sounds quite damning but Universal have ultimately made a lot less effort with these releases than they claim. Founding guitarist Tony Iommi has often said there’s very little recorded material in the Sabbath vaults that could be used for bonus tracks, and he remains correct. The deluxe editions of the first three albums with Ozzy Osbourne on vocals, all released in 2009, proved this, and so do these.

Live Evil was culled from shows on the 1981 tour for Mob Rules and was released as a double album in 1982. When the Sabbath catalogue made it to CD some of Dio’s stage banter and some of the audience noise was removed between songs so that it would fit on a single disc. No one complained. This version restores the removed non-music and makes this a 2CD album, each disc coming in at around 45-minutes. Unnecessary and actually a worse listening experience than the single disc because of the change half way through, there are no extra songs here at all, making this release worthless to any fan. Even people who don’t own this album are best advised to pick up the single disc before it disappears.

Mob Rules does little better and is actually quite an insulting release to the biggest fans of the band. The first disc here is the original album, plus the very rare alternate version of the title track (with some different vocals and a different mix of the guitar solo, amongst other things) and the live version of Die Young which appeared only as a 12″ single b-side. Admirable enough so far. The second disc however is where the biggest fans will feel betrayed while everyone else remains happy. It is the Live At Hammersmith Odeon CD released as what was meant to be an ultra-limited, numbered, never-to-be-repeated run by Rhino Handmade Records in 2007. Only available from Rhino’s US store, and therefore expensive to ship to everywhere else in the World, there were only meant to be 5000 units produced.

The signs were there in later 2007 when a “tour edition” of The Dio Years surfaced with live bonus tracks lifted from the limited edition CD, but releasing the whole thing like this will come as a step too far for the fans who bought Live At Hammersmith Odeon believing the claims from the label that they were buying something special. Especially so soon.

And so, the only passable one, the only real success, the seminal first album with Dio, Heaven And Hell, which gave the currently reformed band its name. Again the original album makes up the first disc, and the second brings together b-sides and rare live tracks unavailable on CD anywhere else. It’s not that interesting to listen to as all of the live tracks are versions of tracks from the main album, and two of them are here twice each, but these will all be new to everyone but the oldest Sabbath fans who own the original vinyl singles; they’ve never been released on CD. The last four of these come from the same concert, so perhaps not digging up and including the whole show is a chance missed, but these releases don’t really seem to be about pleasing the fans as much as possible.

It’s not the first time labels have cashed in on Black Sabbath with nothing new to offer, and doubtful it will be the last. After all, these three albums were only re-released as the over-priced The Rules of Hell box set in 2008. Universal would have pleased a lot more fans by collecting all of the rare/unreleased tracks onto a single disc, maybe unearthing something else, and releasing that.

“ actually quite an insulting release ”

Heaven And Hell Tracklist:
CD1 – Neon Knights / Children of The Sea / Lady Evil / Heaven And Hell / Wishing Well / Die Young / Walk Away / Lonely Is The Word
CD2 – Children of The Sea (Live) / Heaven And Hell (Live) / Lady Evil (Mono Edit) / Neon Knights (Live, Hartford, CN, USA ’80) / Children Of The Sea (Live, Hartford, CN, USA ’80) / Heaven And Hell (Live, Hartford, CN, USA ’80) / Die Young (Live, Hartford, CN, USA ’80)

Mob Rules Tracklist:
CD1 – Turn Up The Night / Voodoo / The Sign of The Southern Cross / E5150 / The Mob Rules / Country Girl / Slipping Away / Falling Off The Edge f The World / Over And Over / Die Young (Live) / The Mob Rules (Alternative Version)
CD2 – E5150 (Live) / Neon Knights (Live) / N.I.B. (Live) / Children Of The Sea (Live) / Country Girl (Live) / Black Sabbath (Live) / War Pigs (Live) / Slipping Away (Live) / Iron Man (Live) / The Mob Rules (Live) / Heaven And Hell (Live) / Paranoid (Live) / Voodoo (Live) / Children Of The Grave (Live)

Live Evil Tracklist:
CD1 – E5150 / Neon Knights / N.I.B. / Children Of The Sea / Voodoo / Black Sabbath / War Pigs / Iron Man
CD2 – The Mob Rules / Heaven And Hell / The Sign Of The Southern Cross / Heaven And Hell (continued) / Paranoid / Children Of The Grave / Fluff

Written by Andy Lye
More: 2010, Albums, Heavy Metal, Re-release, Black Sabbath