The Devil You Know

Product Information

I think it was a combination of two thoughts - the plot of the song itself and the thought of people who get lost in the addiction to hard drugs that alter their realities, thus getting themselves buried deeper and deeper underground...

Heaven & Hell Official North American Tour Dates Confirmed". KNAC. 4 May 2009 . Retrieved 10 May 2009. Best Buy will offer an exclusive version featuring a DVD with unreleased video of the band recording the album including studio performances, interviews, and other behind-the-scenes content.a b Cohen, Jonathan (10 February 2009). "Heaven & Hell Feeling Devilish on New Album". Billboard . Retrieved 11 February 2009. iTunes will offer an exclusive version with previously unreleased live recordings of "Die Young" and "I" from the band's 2007 European tour. The songs are generally big, staid tanks of lead, built on Vinny Appice's plodding 4/4 pound and loaded with a stately majesty that recalls this lineup's classics — the atmosphere of "Heaven and Hell" (the song) and "Children of the Sea", brought into the modern day and made just a little darker and more weighty. Some are decrying the sheer metric tonnage of doom on "The Devil You Know", but I submit that HEAVEN & HELL are at their brooding best on this more ponderous, epic material. The more uptempo "Double the Pain", for instance, is one of the few less-than-stellar cuts on the record, seeming like a castoff from Iommi's late-Eighties riff tapes (though even here, the band's effortless conviction comes pretty damn close to selling it). Now that we have all that all cleared up, we can move on to the actual record itself. To begin, this one cannot be judged on the merit of your typical debut album. The guitar and bass work have that Sabbath ring, and Dio brings his voice and words to the mix. The Devil You Know could be held up to the standard set by Heaven & Hell, the album. But that’s where, like Mob Rules and 1992’s Dehumanizer, it doesn’t have a fighting chance. As I mentioned I had just reviewed and listened to "13" so when I popped this in I was immediately reminded (already knew) what a difference there is between Ozzy Osbourne and Dio. Even on the slow, sludgy opener "Atom And Evil" Dio's voice makes the song alive, especially compared to the crushingly dull performance of Ozzy on "13. That album would have been 10x better with Dio at the mic.

The album's US import was released in Japan on 24 April 2009, four days earlier than its original due date of 28 April. The Japan domestic pressing which is a SHM-CD (Super High Material CD) was released on 27 April. It was produced by the band and sound engineer Mike Exeter. [4] Ultratop.be – Heaven & Hell – The Devil You Know" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved 10 October 2021. In a recent interview with Revolver magazine, Ronnie James Dio described the material on the HEAVEN AND HELL album as "a real cross-section of everything we've done, from 'Heaven and Hell' through 'Mob Rules' and 'Dehumanizer'. I think there's a lot of 'Dehumanizer' in it, but a lot of other things, too, a real good blend of what this band has represented."These lyrics were typed in myself straight out of the lyrics that appear in the CD booklet. They are accurate except for typos. If you find an error from my transcription let me know, but don’t tell me “the lyrics should be something else”– these are the official lyrics from the liner notes! The music is mostly played in minor keys, obviously to take advantage of the natural tendency to sound more imposing. The band does do a decent job of staying away from standard verse-chorus-verse structure. This makes the individual songs stand out more and keeps the album from running together. Unfortunately, many of the songs do tend to stay at one speed. Some tempo changes would serve to make the songs stand out even more.