Ronnie James Dio
Strange Highways

THE REVIEW

Ronnie had already figured it out: endowed with uncommon intelligence and sensitivity, he perceived that, after the cycle with Rainbow and that with Black Sabbath, even with Dio, it had reached the end of the line, and he said so clearly in the lyrics of his "My Eyes". The singer and songwriter, icon of epic hard rock, felt he finally needed to look ahead to the future with a more disenchanted view and sharper and more modern sounds. In 1992, his path and Tony Iommi's crossed for the second time: the result was "Dehumanizer": Dio expresses his new lyrical verve in the lyrics of "Computer God", "I", and "Letters From Earth", but the album doesn't convince at all: it's a work of compromise; Tony Iommi is no longer the right guitarist for Ronnie James Dio, to express new concepts new people are needed, and thus Dio returns to the scene: Ronnie James, his faithful Vinnie Appice on drums and the excellent new entry Jeff Pilson on bass. To cover the crucial and delicate role of axeman, the enlightened frontman chooses the journeyman Tracy Grijalva: The break with the past is too sharp, the path taken by the band too "progressive" to aspire for commercial gratification, "Strange Highways" of 1994 marks a stunning leap forward compared to the Sabbathian "Dehumanizer", on whose seeds it nevertheless developed: faster, heavier, more convinced, more inspired, and above all more courageous.

The lyrics of this album talk about religion, cultural decay, abuse, violence, and paranoia, the world of "Strange Highways" is a dark, cold world, without rules or morals, where there is no space for joy and kindness, or even for a small smile: the artist is not insensitive to all this: his voice, apart from a couple of melodic brackets, is a visceral, indignant howl that duets with Tracy G's guitar, creating a prickly sound, with awkward and limping movement, almost penetrating the bones. This album also highlights the drumming of Vinny Appice, a war machine with heavy armament and Jeff Pilson's bass, less conspicuous and in the foreground compared to the other instruments, which discreetly, almost surreptitiously, weaves through all the songs on the album.

With great surprise, it is discovered that the more "radio-friendly" tracks are the faster ones, the various "Firehead", "Hollywood Black", "One Foot In The Grave", and "Here's To You", just a tad less dissonant and distorted than the rest of the album, and often shrouded in a slight veil of dark humor; "Jesus, Mary, And The Holy Ghost" is a tormented opener, all accelerations and restarts, where even the growl of a rabid dog peeks out, "Evilution" stands out for the obsessive rhythm imposed by Pilson's sulfurous and gurgling bass, on which Tracy G's guitar grinds and contorts upon itself, "Pain" impresses for how the sweet and dreamy interpreter of "Rainbow Eyes" can sing with such bitter ferocity, "Give Her The Gun" is an almost raw ballad both musically and lyrically, "Strange Highways", the title track, is almost alienating for its illusory slow start and its rhythm, slow and desolate, marked by a well-defined and hypnotic bass this time, on which RJD gives voice to the bewilderment and disappointment of a man who finds himself confronting a wounded and derelict world, to which he feels alien.

Though not yet a perfect work (Dio will do even better with the subsequent "Angry Machines", more radical and synthetic, with "This Is Your Life", the song, in my view, the most emotional in the band's entire history as a closure) "Strange Highways" deserves the highest regard, for how Ronnie James Dio was able to follow his artistic instinct, throwing his heart over the obstacle, facing a highly predictable commercial flop, and the hostility of a large part of the fans, and giving up the appeal and more secure revenues that the name Black Sabbath could have offered him; besides "Man On The Silver Mountain", "Stargazer", "Heaven And Hell", "Holy Diver", and "I Could Have Been A Dreamer" this is also how I like to remember Ronnie.