SouthSideoftheSky
Caught in the middle (between Rainbow and Black Sabbath)
I'm surprised to see that I’m the first person to review this classic, the very first album by Dio and according to many their best. Just like Ozzy Osbourne had done a couple of years earlier, Ronnie James Dio came straight out of Black Sabbath to form his own self-titled band. It is indeed possible, even plausible, that Ronnie James was directly inspired by Ozzy’s solo success and thought that ‘if Ozzy can do it, so can I’. And it turned out he could indeed!
As you all know, Ronnie James Dio was the lead singer in Rainbow before he replaced Ozzy as the lead vocalist in Black Sabbath and the formula for Dio's music is clearly a crossover between Dio-era Rainbow (Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, Rising & Long Live Rock 'N' Roll) and Dio-era Black Sabbath (Heaven And Hell & Mob Rules) but adapted for the 80’s. As a fan of both Rainbow and Black Sabbath, this is a good formula for me even if it is hardly groundbreaking.
Again like Ozzy Osbourne, Ronnie James too gathered a distinguished cast around him with Jimmy Bain (who previously played with Ronnie in Rainbow) on bass and Vinny Appice (who played with him in Black Sabbath) on drums. The guitarist on Holy Diver was Vivian Campbell, who like Randy Rhoads in Ozzy’s band, was similarly very young and basically unknown before and also very talented. Ironically, Jake E. Lee was part of the initial rehearsals that led up to Holy Diver but he left to join Ozzy’s band and Lee can be heard on the latter’s third album Bark At The Moon that was released the same year as Holy Diver.
Dio did not have a permanent keyboard player at this point but both Jimmy Bain and Ronnie James himself played keyboards on the album. Claude Schnell joined Dio for the tour in support of Holy Diver and then went on to play on subsequent studio albums. Also the production was handled by Ronnie James himself.
Both the title track and the catchy Rainbow In The Dark became hits and Stand Up And Shout and Don’t Talk To Strangers too became strong live favourites for the rest of Dio’s long career. In 2005, Dio would go on a special tour on which they performed the Holy Diver album in its entirety in the original running order which proves just how important this album was for the band and its fans.
However, I don’t think the album is uniformly excellent. I wholly agree that the title track and particularly Don’t Talk To Strangers are eternal classics of traditional Heavy Metal and several of the other songs are great too, but I don’t think the album as a whole reaches the heights of previous classic albums Ronnie James sang on like Rainbow’s Rising and Black Sabbath’s Heaven And Hell. Gypsy and Straight Through The Heart are the least good songs here, in my opinion.
The slow and heavy closer Shame On The Night seems to be modeled on the songs that closed Heaven And Hell and Mob Rules respectively. But nothing by Dio is as heavy as Black Sabbath and Holy Diver is clearly a more polished affair than those Black Sabbath classics.
Many Metal fans probably dislike the infectious Rainbow In The Dark with its heavily keyboard-driven melody that in many ways resembles what Asia was doing at the time, but I kind of like it, actually! Invisible is another favourite of mine and I particularly like the first part when Ronnie sings the immortal words "If your circle stays unbroken, then you're a lucky man, 'Cause it never, never, never has for me"
Holy Diver is an excellent addition to any Metal collection, but make sure you get those classic Rainbow and Black Sabbath albums first!