Rhapsody Reviews Heaven and Hell

The band formerly known as Dio-fronted Black Sabbath introduce their first album under their new moniker (or if you're keeping score, their first album together in seventeen years,) and the result is so powerful and so malevolent, it's already being compared to Sab's 1970 masterpiece Paranoid. Having shed their Black Sabbath skin for this moment in their long, heavy history matches all too well with The Devil You Know's overall disclosure of a darker, more focused side for Tony Iommi's unearthly riffing, Geezer Butler's down-tuned bass mastery, Vinny Appice's pace-setting backend and Ronnie Dio's powerful, annunciated shouts. Opening with the wicked creepy-crawl of "Atom and Evil" before calculatedly plowing through the powerhouse benchmark "Bible Black", other highlights include the evil bass intro of the infectious galloper "Double the Pain," the sludgy, bluesy anthem "The Turn of the Screw," and the astounding thrasher (yes, thrasher) of "Eating the Cannibals." Housing all the classic Dio-Butler-Iommi-Appice elements while expanding upon their own bricklaying ideas, The Devil You Know demonstrates how these metal masons are not only still slaying; but still showing everyone how it's done right.