Heaven & Hell — The Devil You Know

Heaven & Hell's first official album isn't exactly subtle in narrow-focusing the song material to the band's new name and brand.

The Ronnie James Dio-fronted, can't-call-themselves-"Black Sabbath" rockers basically spend The Devil You Know's 10 songs examining Christianity in a sludgy blur of devils and angels.

"Bible Black" brilliantly works the formula of the slow, moody intro before it bursts into a vicious Tony Iommi riff. It easily matches anything from the band's past, but that high can't be maintained.

Heaven & Hell are too often caught up in delivering doomy, mid-tempo stomps that suffer from sounding too same-y. And when they speed things up, it's wasted on thematically ridiculous songs like "Eating The Cannibals."

As far as Dio-Sabbath goes, The Devil You Know definitely exceeds 1992's computers-will-destroy-us concept album Dehumanizer, but there's little here that approaches Mob Rules or Heaven And Hell from the early '80s for sheer dynamic metal brilliance.

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