Heaven & Hell
The Devil You Know

There is already another excellent review of this album, I know, but my aim is to provide "the other side of the story".

A dear friend of mine went to see Heaven & Hell at the Gods Of Metal this year and returned home quite disappointed because they played almost only songs from the new, eagerly awaited album. He hadn't heard the album, but he was negatively shocked by the new compositions. Who could blame him? For my part, I was happy to have seen them live at the Gods Of Metal in 2007, when they only performed historical tracks from the three splendid previous albums of this excellent line-up: the magnificent "Heaven And Hell", the excellent "The Mob Rules", and the good "Dehumanizer". That was a wonderful concert, with some amazing Black Sabbath!

"The Devil You Know" is an album that I didn't quite manage to enjoy. I confess that I had been waiting for this album for ten years, but now I wish it had never come out. Let’s make it clear: in a time like this, when producing good music seems to have become the most difficult task, this album might seem like a guiding light; yet the comparison with the old Black Sabbath (because, despite wanting to rebrand themselves with this new name Heaven And Hell, they are still Black Sabbath) is inevitable. The big weak point is the vocals, often slow, dragged, tired, despite the excellent voice of Ronnie James Dio. If already at the time of the good album "Dehumanizer", some people had reason to wrinkle their noses because it was a "reheated soup", I would say that it is on this album that it truly shows. It seems that with "The Devil You Know" the downward escalation is appropriately (albeit suddenly) consistently emphasized.

From the horrible original cover, designed by Norwegian Øyvind Haagensen, one can already sense the heavy atmosphere, as well as the coldness of the alternative cover, presented above, of the so-called Walmart Edition.

The album opens wearily with "Atom & Evil" and "Fear", two tracks with not exactly effective vocals and Tony Iommi's riffing excessively slowed down to be the (not good) premise for the whole album. "Follow The Tears", the single of the album, and "Double The Pain", feel like déjà vu. "Eating The Cannibals" wouldn't be so bad, but the vocals remarkably resemble "Overlove", from Dio's solo "Dream Evil" (1987).

So what can be saved? One of the most liberating moments is undoubtedly the beautiful solo in "Bible Black", where you can hear the old Tony Iommi of the past. The riff of "Rock And Roll Angel" is also good, quite original compared to the rest. "Neverwhere" would have been the ideal opener, a fairly fresh song, instead, it is placed almost at the end of the album. It must be added dutifully that the musicians are great: the album is exquisitely executed, both in terms of chemistry and technique. Besides, the Iommi-Butler-Appice team was already well consolidated back in those days. Interestingly, keyboards are credited to Mike Exeter, although they, as usual, struggle to be heard.

But this is not enough: "The Devil You Know" is, in my humble opinion, anything but a great album. This album could indeed easily be a solo album by Dio, as repetitive as only the latest albums by Ronnie James are known to be, with the typical guitar sound of Iommi and a repetitive and predictable songwriting, perhaps drawing (alas) from the last studio work of Black Sabbath, the awful "Forbidden". "The Devil You Don't Know" would have been a more appropriate name.