livE 3vil

In staying with the metal theme for the weekend, I’ve dug into the record crates and found a 24-year-old live Black Sabbath album, Live Evil.


I’m not even going to try to get into the tangled mess that is/was Sabbath. According to Wiki , some 18 people have passed through the doors, not including the four original members (Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward) who all seem to come and go on a rotational basis. Black Sabbath online , though, lists 30 musicians, including the original four. Anyway you look at it, it’s hard to tell the players without a score card. As of presstime, the band consists of Osbourne, Iommi, Butler, Ward, and a keyboard player, Adam Wakeman.

But, back in 1982, Ozzy had been gone for three years. Ronnie James Dio of Rainbow had been drafted to replace him. Reacting to the success of a bootleg from the Ozzy era, “Live at Last,” the newly recharged and Dio-fronted Sabbath released “Live Evil,” recorded in Seattle, San Antonio, and Dallas during the “Heaven and Hell” tour.

A review of the two-LP set, from The Metal Observer: “’Live Evil’ is a band at the top of their game proving there was much more to the Sabbath name than Ozzy Osbourne. The sound is powerful and fresh, the playing tight and supremely heavy.
“Far from trying to sound like Ozzy, Dio goes one better and turns the Ozzy period songs into more of a theatre-type affair, lending his own unique voice to expand the darkness and bleakness of Iommi's monster riffs.”

Ultimately, Dio would leave the band while they were putting the finishing touches on this album. There was speculation, which to this day all parties deny, that Dio and then-drummer Vinny Appice sneaked into the studio to mix the drums and vocals higher. In what Dio has called retaliation for him and Appice leaving the group, on the back of Live Evil, Dio is listed as "Ronnie Dio" instead of "Ronnie James Dio," and Vinny Appice is listed as a special guest rather than a member of the band.

E5150/Neon Knights.mp3
NIB.mp3
Black Sabbath.mp3
Mob Rules.mp3

posted by aikin @ 2:06 PM