Last In Line
Heavy Crown

"There's a drunk Scotsman on the phone looking for you." Those were the words spoken by his father, at three in the morning, to the then nineteen-year-old guitarist Viv Campbell. The voice on the other end of the line is that of Jimmy Bain, a bass player who had just ended his stint with the Wild Horses, recruited almost by chance between pubs in London, just to be part of the new solo project of the now former Rainbow and Black Sabbath singer – Ronnie Dio.

As they say across the ocean: "..and the rest is history".

Bain, Campbell, and Appice composed and released a hard rock album even in 2016, at first making the most observant and shrewd suggest it was a scavenging operation. This said, both due to the premature death of the frontman who put this formation together back in 1982, and because, before the said death, it seems Campbell never responded to the sirens of a reunion with the sprite Ronnie.

But there will be no other chapters, as Bain himself followed the (former) project leader "Dio" to their maker - and he did so right after the release of this work.

"Heavy Crown" represents the testament of this story: a hard 'n' heavy essay, the sound of hard rock during the N.W.O.B.H.M. The resurrected Campbell plays for the last time with his heavy doom riffing, finally sealing with this piece the discography abruptly interrupted from "Dream Evil" of Dio in 1987 – in which the Irish guitarist no longer featured, to leave space to the greater songwriting of Craig Goldie in that period.

The surviving trio from the "The Last In Line" (1984) lineup composed evoking their rock writing style. As mentioned, in the structure of the songs and in the sound of the guitars, in "Curse The Day" and "The Sickness," Bain and Campbell bring back the doom borrowed from Sabbath thirty years prior.

Another commendation: at least in tracks like "Starmaker" and "Burn This House Down" there's no impression of listening to a mere tribute singer. Likewise, in "Devil In Me," Freeman produces vocals his way, without struggling to imitate his illustrious predecessor too much. Circumstance that, if not appreciated for the originality of style (lacquered like an eighties hairstyle) at least grants him the dignity of an artist "causa sui".

In Bain's pulsating bass - catapulted directly from that eighties era, but on a groove recorded with current consoles – lie all the stories of an underrated hard rock turner and composer of those years, often out, touring the world. Cocaine and alcoholic comas included.

In the lyrics of the mentioned "Starmaker" and "Orange Glow," inspired by the elf's thousand readings, one cannot certainly find the same background and dualistic depth of the original. Yet a lance must be broken, when the chorus closes and once again the usual, bastard solo progression enters. Like re-listening to an outtake from "Holy Diver" (1983).

The album is divided between examples of bone-crushing rock, at times inspired, like "Martyr," "Already Dead," "I Am Revolution," and usual monolithic jingles. The title track and "Blame It On Me" hover between the glossy of the late eighties and the dry heavy sound of three performers – that of the very first guitar/bass/drum mutations from rock to metal.

They weren't Led Zeppelin: compared to the past, they would have composed entirely different or nothing more. Thus, it is a niche product, a wise backward tour for genre enthusiasts only and the score is zero if this premise is ignored.

Like buying reminiscences, of beautiful and splendid, once and for all.