SouthSideoftheSky Lock up the dwarf!

Ronnie James Dio has been in the music business since the late 1950’s (!) and has thus lived through many changes in musical trends. If you asked him today he would probably claim that he has always stayed the same, but anyone who has heard some of his work with Ronnie Dio & The Prophets, Elf, Rainbow, Black Sabbath and Dio would strongly contest any claim to that effect. The early Dio albums had been all about bringing the kind of music he did with Rainbow and Black Sabbath into the 80’s making it more polished and melodic and with Lock Up The Wolves (and the subsequent couple of albums), he tried to adapt to the musical climate of the early 90’s.

I don’t know the exact details about what happened in between this album and the previous one, but the Dio of Lock Up The Wolves is completely different from the Dio of Dream Evil from three years before. Only Ronnie himself is left in the band here with drum duties being taken over by Simon Wright, bass by Teddy Cook, keyboards by Jens Johansson and guitars by Rowan Robertson. Jens Johansson is an incredible keyboard player most known for dueling with Yngwie Malmsteen on the latter's classic 80’s albums. With Johansson on board you might expect a keyboard heavy album, but ironically there is much less keyboards on this album than on any of the previous Dio albums. What is the point of hiring such an extraordinary keyboard player if he can barely be heard at all on the album? What a waste of talent!

With a wholly new backing band and such a competent one at that, you might expect something of a musical rebirth. But this is very far from the truth! It should be allowed that this is somewhat fresh in the sense that it is very different from previous albums, but the songwriting is middle-of-the-road and utterly unsurprising. The sound is considerably heavier and the music is much less catchy which sounds great on paper but the actual result is nothing to be excited about. Strip away the heavy guitar sound and you expose some rather mundane songs that are every bit as generic and predictable as the least good songs on Sacred Heart and The Last In Line (which is hardly a compliment!), if not worse.

Perhaps surprisingly, there is a strong Blues element on this album that seems to range back to Rainbow’s most bluesy moments (which were always the least exciting element of that great band). I don’t know where this sudden interest in the Blues came from, but on a later tour he even decided to cover Deep Purple’s Mistreated!

One major problem with this album is its sheer length. It runs for over an hour and, given how similar the sound is throughout, it is a rather tedious listen. After listening to the whole album, I don’t really remember anything special about it which is evidence of its non-existent staying power. Don’t get me wrong, this is not downright awful music but there is not one single moment that stands out as great for me. Even the disappointing Sacred Heart had a couple of strong moments, but Lock Up The Wolves is just dreary throughout.

Avoid this one unless you want everything Dio!