Whatever side you take in the Ozzy vs. Dio debates, there is no denying that whenever Tony Iommi and Ronnie James Dio teamed up, it was certainly a more productive experience. Nowhere was this more obvious than the recent "Heaven and Hell" project, an unlikely Dio-era reunion of Black Sabbath, all because Dio and Iommi got together to compile The Dio Years, which led to recording three new songs, then an entire album, all in the space of a couple years, with only Dio's death in 2010 ending the project. Meanwhile, the "reunion" with Ozzy Osbourne resulted in two songs over 15 years, a couple stints in rehab and a stupid MTV reality show for Ozzy, and a never-ending drama over whether or not Bill Ward was still in the band.
Of course life is unfair and when the Ozzy-band finally got their act together and released an album, it blew away the sales of all the Dio-era stuff combined and was touted as "the first new Black Sabbath album in 35 years!" (which basically ignores 10 or 11 albums). While 13 was a decent album, I still side with professionalism and prefer the version of the band that actually got down to business and recorded new music when they got together. Of course,
Sabbath had been stumbling along for the past five years. After Dio left the band in 1982, taking drummer Vinny Appice with him to form Dio (the band), the band squeaked out one more album, the odd Born Again, with ex-Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan and, for one last time, original drummer Bill Ward. Ridiculed as "Deep Sabbath" or "Black Purple", the lineup quickly fizzled as Ward once again fell off the wagon and Gillan made a "surprise" return to Deep Purple. Iommi and faithful (to this point) bassist Geezer Butler tried to reconstitute the band with Ward (yet again) and a couple of questionable and mostly-unknown singers (Dave Donato? Jeff Fenholt?) before disbanding. Aside from an appearance in their original form at Live Aid in 1985, the band was effectively dead until 1986. Under label pressure, Iommi's debut solo album became Black Sabbath's twelfth album, Seventh Star, an album that featured no other band members from the 1970-1984 period. Other than Glenn Hughes, another ex-Purple to grace a Sabbath album, the rest of the band was largely unknown. Over the course of the next few albums, Iommi and new frontman Tony Martin carried on with a weird roster of supporting musicians, such as Laurence Cottle, Jo Burt, Terry Chimes, and Dave "The Beast" Spitz (best known as the brother of Anthrax's Dan Spitz). Even though the revolving door rhythm section had finally scored some top-level talent by 1990's Tyr with drummer Cozy Powell and bassist Neil Murray, the band was just a wispy shadow of its old self.
Meanwhile, Dio became a veritable legend of the early 1980's with blockbuster albums Holy Diver and The Last in Line. Unfortunately the formula lost its potency a little on Sacred Heart (1985) and a lot more with Dream Evil (1987), even with a change of guitarist. A dramatic attempt by Dio to shake up the sound and lineup for 1990's Lock Up the Wolves didn't pan out as hoped, and by 1991 the chance to work again with Black Sabbath didn't seem like such a bad idea.
Following the recording of Tyr, Sabbath enjoyed a little blip of nostalgia, and during the supporting tour folks like Ian Gillan, Geezer Butler, and Ronnie James Dio made special guest appearances. From this, a new lineup with Butler and Dio organically came into being (Martin sort of awkwardly disappeared and I have no clue what happened to Neil Murray). Cozy Powell was initially retained as drummer, but later dropped due to an injury, leading to....surprise!....Vinny Appice making his grand return to the band. Dehumanizer, the resulting album from this first-ever Black Sabbath "reunion", was a surprisingly fresh and remarkable album. The band seems to have consciously jettisoned the past decade's experiments and picked up where The Mob Rules left off, featuring the same musicians (although Vinny Appice and Dio parted ways after Dream Evil, he rejoined while his replacement in Dio, Simon Wright, went on to AC/DC). I won't go so far as to say it's wall-to-wall hits. Giving the disc a careful listen, certain tracks stood out more than others: "Computer God", "After All (The Dead)", "TV Crimes", "Master of Insanity", and "I". Meanwhile stuff like "Letters From Earth" and "Buried Alive" are sort-of filler. Not bad songs, but they just don't stick. The songs have pretty crunchy production without a lot of bells and whistles, though "Time Machine" in the "Wayne's World Mix" form is a little more glossy than the rest (as well as a reminder of what year it was). Content-wise, the album is fairly "real", without much sword-and-sorcery type lyrics, that had worked pretty well for Dio up until this point.
Unfortunately, there was just too much drama among all the players for the reunion to last more than a single album. In fact, the tour crashed and burned when, facing with the humiliation of opening for Ozzy's solo band, Dio quit the band, with Appice quickly following. A two-day-long lineup featuring emergency fill-in vocalist Rob Halford helped avert a total disaster. By 1994, Tony Martin-fronted Black Sabbath and Dio as a solo band were once again in effect, as if Dehumanizer never happened. Oh, but it did! Two notable developments occurred in the fallout from the reunion. First, Geezer Butler remained in the band, making their next album, Cross Purposes, probably the most "legitimate" of the Tony Martin albums. However, he would be coaxed away by Ozzy Osbourne of all people following that album. While Dio probably suffered terribly in the financial department in quitting Black Sabbath again, he emerged from the experience with a much heavier sound that maintained the more realistic lyrical themes brought forth by this album. Though his new guitarist, Tracy G, never really fit with the fans, Dio himself was clearly invigorated in the post-Dehumanizer era and pretty much all of his output until his death had more poise and energy than his peers. Unfortunately for Tony Iommi, Cross Purposes didn't help the band's fortunes, and, although he valiantly reunited the Tyr lineup, the next album, Forbidden, was a bust and marked the end of Black Sabbath as a recording band (aside from one single and the Dio Years bonus tracks) until 2013. Until recently, for most casual Sabbath fans, Dehumanizer really was the last hurrah of a once-mighty brand name. More seasoned listeners though know better. If you aren't prone to being hung up on a name brand, Iommi's actual solo albums and Heaven and Hell continued the story during the recording-bereft reunion with Ozzy.
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