Made in Heaven (and Hell) (Heaven And Hell - Black Sabbath)

Member Name: Hudson

Product:	Heaven And Hell - Black Sabbath
Date:	12/11/00 (167 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: One of the best albums ever

Disadvantages: Only 8 songs

The release of 1980's Heaven and Hell marked a major turning point in the career of Black Sabbath. Original vocalist and founder member Ozzy Osbourne was told to leave after his drink and drugs problems and in his place came Ronnie James Dio. He had been recently left Rainbow after having been given his marching orders by Ritchie Blackmore who wanted a singer that would give them greater commercial success. Rainbow's loss was Sabbaths gain as they tried to regain their domination and leadership of the heavy metal genre. Heaven and Hell has since become one of metals best albums ever and Sabbath fans fears of the band going into obscurity were displelled as it became one of Sabbath most successful albums ever.
It was essential that Sabbath were to make a superb album to prove that they still had it in them to make great records and they did this with Hevaen and Hell.

The album opens with the rip roaring Neon Nights. This is an extremely fast and straight to the point song which has all the usual Sabbath trademarks: a cool guitar riff, a pounding bass and superb drumming. Neon Nights really makes you take notice of the album and your mind won't drift away to other things when you listen to this. It also became a favourite of the band for opening live shows too and it was released as a single getting to number 22 in the charts.
Children of the Sea is another highly polished and well written song. It has a great accoustic start and the backing vocals really help to give the song added volume. The start is slightly similar to Anno Mundi on 1990's TYR album.
There are no bad tracks on Heaven and Hell but others do stand out above the rest. The ones least talked about are probably Wishing Well, Lady Evil and Walk Away which are all great tracks and have the same sound to them. It would probably be fair to say that they are more like hard rock tracks than heavy metal ones. Die Young is a great song which shows the experimental side to
Sabbath. It features keyboards which produce an organ lke sound before and mid way through the song. Lonely is the Word finishes off the album. It is a blues song as is a lot like Over and Over on the Mob Rules album which followed Heaven and Hell's realese in 1981. It is one that guitarist Tony Iommi is particularly proud off since it has some stunning finger work on the guitar. At this point he described it as his favourite solo.
However even though these are all great songs there is one thing Heaven and Hell will be remembered for: its title track. It is quite simply a masterpiece and deserves the title of the best metal song ever. It has a famous bass line which was reported to be written by keyboardist Geoff Nicholls. The lyrics are a great example of Dio's style and the last verse's words are breath-taking. Then after a lenghly solo from Iommi theres the fast paced ending before the finale of a gentle harp playing softly in the background.

Heaven and Hell is thought to be the best Black Sabbath album without Ozzy and its better than some of the ones with him. Even though this line-up didn't last long the album is a fine representation of each members ability and it shows you their their musical inventiveness. To sum things up this is one of the best hevay metal/rock albums ever made.

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