A review I probably should have written in May

-or-

Gríma Wormtongue can still frikkin' rock!!!

Archive from MySpace blog
Category: Music

So, tickets go on sale Friday for Heaven and Hell -- again -- (Thursday, I think, through the local rock station) for a September show at the casino. I'm in a quandary as to whether to buy. I know it's going to be a great show; I've already seen it.

Heaven and Hell played the Mohegan Sun Arena May 15th, with Megadeth (and some other band I didn't see) in tow. In September, they'll play with Queensrÿche and Alice Cooper -- the former I've seen 5 times, and the latter never. The May show was fantastic. September promises to be as good -- if the 3 major bands on the bill doesn't shorten everyone's set. This isn't the show you you want 3 hour-long set for -- after only an hour, each of these bands is only getting warmed up.

Megadeth, on the other hand, is the perfect band to do an hour before the headliner. Why? Because in an hour's time, they can blister and burn through some 10 of their greatest hits and a nice sampling off the new record. The busted on stage, the drummer pinned to the back of the stage curtain by his kit looking like an animal in a cage, and with maybe two words on welcome, slammed into a blistering set that covered everything a fan would want to hear. A couple words from Dave to promote the new album, a couple more to thank the crowd for their enthusiasm -- and who wouldn't be enthused with a set that ran like a runaway train from start to finish of his career. Hanger 18, Sweating Bullets, and a medley of 5 tunes, including the classic Mechanics Dave wrote for Metallica before his unceremonious departure. The best thing about Megadeth medley, though, in 6 minutes, they play 5 songs, start to finish, each normally clocking 3 minutes long. Mechanics reminded me of an important thing: for as popular as Metallica has become, for anything they play (The Four Horsemen, for example, being James Hetfield's lyrical rewrite for Mechanics), Dave and Megadeth can play it bigger, louder, better, and without doubt... faster.

So Megadeth's set closed, and you'd think we'd been playing for an hour, so we went for a smoke and another beer. Cooled off, and back in the auditorium -- our seats, thank to a good hookup at the Sun, were phenomenal, by the way -- we waited to see what was in store for us from the headlining act. Well, from the moment the curtain lifted, we weren't disappointed.

The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences doesn't give awards for live performance. They should. And if they did, The Heaven and Hell Tour would undoubtedly win the Grammy for Best Set Decoration. The curtains parted to reveal the ruins of a gothic church, stone arches, torches, and 3 stained glass windows that revealed as video screens displaying images such as angels smoking cigarettes.

On the left (the far end from our vantage point), Geezer Butler, in his elder years now looking like Gérard Depardieu with a bass. At the rear of the stage, Vinny Appice, a menacing humanoid representation of the Muppet Show's Animal, across between Joe Pesci and an Orge. On the right, Tony Iommi... OK, Tony Iommi just looks like Tony Iommi, plastic fingertips and all. And running to the front of the stage, the Angry Gnome of Metal -- scratch that; his prior battles with gnomes being quite well known, referring to him as such seems wrong -- the Gollum-like Metal God that he is, the man who brought us Metal Hand, Gríma Worm... I mean, Ronnie James Dio. But yeah, he really does look too much like Gríma Wormtongue from The Lord of the Rings. He does.

But anyway, enough mocking the appearance of 4 of the greatest men to ever get together and make Metal, they deserve better than the fickle comparisons of my mind's eye. They deserve to get together and make an album. Oh wait, they did. And for an album that spans the "best of" of a career that lasted an entire two studio albums, it truly is an amazing offering. And the tour to support it, amazing as well..

I'd like to stop a moment, and thank VH1 Classic for existing. Not only is it possibly the only place on television to listen to good music, but the VH1 Classic Concert Series has brought us some of the best shows in recent memory. The joy of this series for me, is that I can finally catch some of the bands, that in their hey-day, I was just too young to go see. Pandora's Box of classic shows, of bands I got into too late, or bands who toured when I was still in Elementary School, has been opened. But Eddie Trunk, our modern-day Pandora, need not be chastised for what he has released into the world.

Musically -- and when it comes down to it,musically is what really matters -- the show surpassed my expectations. I had seen Black Sabbath, the real Black Sabbath, at OzzFest not too many years ago -- again, a line-up I had expected had passed me by before I was born. At that show I had been impressed with the musicianship of the original line-up, but that was nothing compared to what I heard at Heaven and Hell. It would be my humble opinion that Black Sabbath really blossomed into true Heavy Metal at the time when they picked up Dio. Tony Iommi is an indisputably awesome guitarist, but this era of the band really allowed him to display the kind of prowess that defines him as a Metal God. Geezer Butler, who almost seems absent in early Sabbath, really shines, and unlike many of his contemporaries, produces a fast, heavy sound without the aid of pick. And of course, there is Vinny Appice. Perhaps moreso than Dio himself, the addition of Appice on drums truly defines the heavier, darker, truly just more metal sound of Dio era Sabbath. The man is a monster... and not just in appearance.

I haven't yet picked up the album this tour supports, but I know I will. There is no way I could not. Perhaps it is in fact a bi-product of the fact that The Dio Years is an eponymous spanning a mere two albums, but everything just fit together. From the heaviest, to the lightest ballad -- well, what passes for a ballad from Dio and Sabbath -- everything just flowed together beautifully. Shockingly, the two of the three new song that they did play live, not only fit, not only were just great tunes, they in fact sounded more like the older works of Sabbath than everything else they played. Ronnie, Tony, Geezer and Vinny truly succeeded when they got back into the studio, and managed to put together 3 tracks that unequivocally deserved to be call Black Sabbath songs.

Kudos, boys.

Now, the question does remain... do I do it all again? I'll have to think on that some more. But in thinking on it initially, I was lucky to have been reminded of what a fantastic show it was the first time around.

Currently listening :
The Dio Years
By Black Sabbath
Release date: 03 April, 2007