One of the strongest influences on my early metal life --- if not the strongest --- was of course Iron Maiden, but a few other bands really impressed me and got me into the genre too --- Saxon, Tygers of Pan-Tang, Motorhead, Diamond Head, Sabbath ---- but without question the first two albums from Dio totally floored me. I consider Dio a real case of reaching the pinnacle of their career early, with the first two albums just about as close to perfect as you can get, the third something of a disappointment, the fourth a real flop and with a pretty steady falloff then for more or less the rest of their discography. There are a few bright spots --- “Killing the dragon”, “Magica” --- but by and large I feel Dio “got it” with their first two albums and never really properly recovered the feeling I got from them after that.
So it’s no surprise that some of
comes from RJD, and as I already reviewed “Holy diver” last year, this time it’s the turn of the second album, a worthy successor to that incandescent debut.
The last in line --- Dio ---1984 (Warner Bros)
It’s perhaps an appropriate title, as after this, for me, Dio would struggle with good albums and would never really attain the glory they put out on their first two efforts. “Sacred heart” had some decent songs and was not a bad album, but was not a patch on either of these, and “Dream evil” had maybe two good songs. After that the rot really seemed to set in, and Dio in my opinion did not recover for another sixteen years, and even then I really only consider their 2002 penultimate album “Killing the dragon” as an example of them getting back to their best. But this was 1984 and coming off the back of the tremendous “Holy diver” (which still rightly holds a place on most people’s list of best metal albums ever) Dio were faced with the dreaded “second album syndrome”.
“Holy diver” had burst onto the scene like a flaming sword, slaying all in its path. It’s not like Ronnie James Dio was an unknown; he was famous both for his stellar work with Rainbow and his later almost regeneration of Black Sabbath, but this was him on his own, with an exciting new young guitarist, and “Holy diver” blew everything out of the water on its release. But the usual problem then surfaced: having created perhaps
the metal album not only of the eighties but quite possibly of the century, Dio were faced with the task of following it up.
Thankfully, “The last in line” fulfils that brief admirably. It’s no “Holy diver” of course, but it’s a powerful followup and I don’t think there’s even one bad track on it. In some ways, the success of “The last in line” is somewhat down to the fact that it mirrors the structure of the debut. The opening track is a loud fast rocker, the second not only a slower cruncher, but also the title track, as was the case on “Holy diver”. This is then followed, on both albums, by two fast rockers and though “One night in the city” doesn’t quite measure up to “Don’t talk to strangers” there are similarities. Side two opens on both albums with another fast rocker, although there the structure begins to diverge a little. Nevertheless, there’s a commercial, airplay-worthy song on side two of each album and the main riff melody in “Rainbow in the dark” can be heard ghosting through “Mystery”.
Both albums have nine tracks, and in the world of vinyl each had five on side one and four on side two. Each album ends with a slow cruncher, though the one that closes this album is more epic and dramatic than “Shame on the night”. Both albums are just over forty minutes long and both were released in the late summer, May for “Holy diver” and July for this one.
So there are a lot of similarities between the two, which stand head and shoulders above anything in the Dio catalogue, and though many of these would be continued on down through the next two albums --- the rot, for me, set in with “Dream evil” but really came to the fore with “Lock up the wolves”, which was --- interestingly or not --- the first Dio album to have more than nine tracks --- I definitely feel the exit of Vivian Campbell after “Sacred heart” had a detrimental effect on future albums. After the disappointing “Dream evil” I stopped caring about Dio, and only got back into them for my special on the anniversary of Ronnie’s passing. If you read that article you’ll see my belief was that in general I had not missed much.
But this is the album we’re concerned with now, and it opens on “We rock”, as Dio set down the marker and roar a triumphant “We’re back!” to the fans, the song careening along on Vivian Campbell’s screaming guitar and driven on Carmine Appice’s pounding drumbeat. The thundering bass of Jimmy Bain adds its inimitable mark before Ronnie comes in with the vocal, in full flight even as he begins. The song powers along and doesn’t really let up at all. A great solo from Campbell sets the scene for the album; easy to see why he had no trouble finding work after a falling-out with the boss in 1985.
After that initial assault things slow down for the title track, with an almost medieval, acoustic guitar intro leading into a gentle vocal from Ronnie, perhaps fooling you into thinking this may already be a ballad. It isn’t. On the word “home” in the final line of the introductory verse the power kicks up as the band pile in, Dio gets rougher with the vocal and we’re into a dark, storming cruncher which owes rather a lot to “Heaven and Hell” by Black Sabbath, another of Dio’s own compositions, and to Rainbow’s “Stargazer”.
A heavy breathing sound introduces “Breathless”, which ups the tempo, though not as fast as the track which follows. There’s some great guitar work from Campbell here, and of course as ever Ronnie slips in a reference to his favourite natural illusion, the rainbow. Powerful, authoritative drumming from Appice too but as ever it’s the near-flawless voice of RJD that carries the song and demands your attention. The fastest track on the album, “I speed at night” is appropriately titled, with Vivian Campbell putting in one of his most fretburning performances to date. Things slow down again for “One night in the city”, another cruncher, almost a love song of sorts, though not a ballad (there aren’t any on this album), the rhythm a sort of triumphant, marching, defiant one as two “children of the night” face the world and explore their love ---
”One night in the city/ One night looking pretty” --- even if it is doomed.
If there is a pinnacle in this album, that’s where I place it. Which is not to say that the rest of the tracks are bad; they just seem in general a little below par compared to the ones that have preceded them, that is until we hit the closer. “Evil eyes” is another fast rocker, but it seems a little derivative, reminding me in places both of “We rock” and “Stand up and shout”. Ronnie references one of his songs with Rainbow, “Catch the rainbow”, when he sings
”Do you ever think about/ The way I caught the rainbow?”.
Some uptempo, bubbly synth lines from Claude Schnell, brought in to handle all keyboards, though up to now he has been to me conspicuous by his absence. Nonetheless, employing a keyboard player is a departure from the debut, where keys duties were split between Bain and Dio himself. This time I assume each wanted to concentrate on their own singular instrument, and with a voice like Ronnie’s I think it was a good idea for him not to be distracted from utilising that to its fullest extent. The keys definitely add something to the song. Continuing into “Mystery”, Schnell’s keys certainly take control here, setting down the whole riff in the kind of way “Rainbow in the dark” would not have been the same without. I find this quite a commercial song, and think it would have been a good single --- oh look! It was.
I have nothing much to say about “Eat your heart out”. If this album has one duff track, this is it. The lyric is awful ---
”Eat your heart out/ You’ve been a bad bad girl/ You’ve been hungry all your life/ So eat it out!” --- yeah. It’s also a very basic melody and while it certainly does not spoil the album, it’s one track I would tend to skip if playing it all the way through, except here, as I need to review all tracks. But the album rallies at the end, coming back with perhaps the strongest closer for an album featuring Ronnie since Rainbow’s “A light in the black”. With a spooky, eerie synth line and wind noises from Schnell (well, from his keyboard, not from his --- oh forget it!), then a deceptively happy keyboard riff we plunge into the epic “Egypt (The chains are on)”.
The song envisions the gods of Egypt as aliens arriving to enslave the population ---
”The strange ones came/ And the people knew/ That the chains were on” and allows our Ronnie to crowbar in another reference to rainbows:
”You see them walking on the water/ See them flying through the sky/ They were frightening in the darkness/ They had rainbows in their eyes” It’s a big, punchy, grindy rhythm with more than a touch of Zep’s “Kashmir” about it. The song of course gives RJD free rein to indulge in his penchant for mythological and fantasy lyrics, and takes us back to 1976 when he crooned the story of the mad wizard in “Stargazer”.
Schnell runs out a fine keyboard passage in the middle as Campbell dials back on the guitar for a short moment before cutting loose one more time and treating us to a superb solo. Though he would play on “Sacred heart” his heart would not be in it, and differences of opinion between he and Ronnie would lead to the man claiming of Vinnie that he just “wasn’t there” for the album. Shortly afterwards Campbell would be given his marching orders, and an era would come to an end.
TRACKLISTING
1. We rock
2. The last in line
3. Breathless
4. I speed at night
5. One night in the city
6. Evil eyes
7. Mystery
8. Eat your heart out
9. Egypt (The chains are on)
I don’t want to keep harping on about it, but this really does mark both the pinnacle and the beginning of the slide into mediocrity for Dio. I have never seen a band before start with such promise and then fade away so quickly. Although they recovered a little with “Magica” in 2000 and its follow up in 2002, Ronnie soon expressed a desire to link back up with his former Black Sabbath mates and formed Heaven and Hell, who only recorded the one album before his untimely death in 2010.
I hesitate to disrespect his memory, and his passing left a void in my heart, as it did I’m sure in that of all his fans and in just about everyone connected to the world of rock and Metal, and the wider music community. But what can’t be ignored is that, while getting back to basics with “Killing the dragon” and to a degree “Master of the moon”, which turned out to be the final Dio album, the band were unlikely to ever reach the heights they did with these two albums. Constant lineup changes, weak albums and tensions between band members made it hard to see them ever returning to the glory days. Had Ronnie recovered, who know what might have happened? Perhaps he would have turned it around. Perhaps he could have convinced Vivian Campbell to return. We’ll never know.
But as it stands, if nothing else, the first two albums remain as a testament to what Dio could and did achieve, and will forever be assured of their place in the Metal Hall of Fame, and in my own heart.