The Dio Years (Black Sabbath, 2007)

This is a tepid collection, but it has three new Black Sabbath songs on it, so they pretty much made this a mandatory purchase upon release. Initially the plan was just to do a Dio-era box set as a follow-up to the successful Ozzy-era box released a few years earlier. Since "stability" is not an adjective readily used to describe anything by Black Sabbath featuring Dio, naturally the project started veering in different directions. On one hand, the notion of a comprehensive box set collection was scaled back to five tracks from Heaven and Hell, four from The Mob Rules, three from Dehumanizer, and just one from Live Evil. One the other hand, some kind a magical spark happened during the birthing process of the compilation which brought the Mob Rules era lineup back together resulting in three new tracks, as indicated above. Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler must have been itching to record some new stuff, seeing that after nearly 10 years of serial touring with Ozzy Osbourne, they had only managed to release two songs under the "Black Sabbath" name. Unlike many "very special new tracks" the three new ones are actually quite good! The band clearly thought so as well and decided to take the act on the road, performing as "Heaven and Hell" and playing classic Dio-era stuff, including songs not featured here.

The choice of "Heaven and Hell" was interesting in that I can't find any consensus about why they didn't tour as Black Sabbath. The Ozzy diehards would have you think that he owns the name now, so no Ozzy, no Black Sabbath. All nice and good except the three tracks on The Dio Years are credited to Black Sabbath as the performer. Others say that Iommi, who likely is the sole owner of the name as the only constant element of the band through its entire history, had to make an agreement with Ozzy Inc. (read: Sharon) not to use the name. Probably the most likely and simplest answer is that Tony didn't want to confuse people since there was no act of disbanding what was passing for Black Sabbath up to that point (though the whole "is Bill Ward in the band?" thing continues to hang over them). So anyone who saw Heaven and Hell live (I did twice!) and/or bought the full album of new songs, The Devil You Know, can proudly say they listened to and/or saw Black Sabbath, even if the name isn't showing up anywhere. I remember joking with a friend that I consider any lineup with two original members to be authentic Black Sabbath as long as one of them was Geezer Butler. Thinking a little more about that later, I realized I invalidated four albums featuring only Iommi and converted at least one Ozzy Osbourne album (Ozzmosis) into a full-fledged Sabbath album. Oops!

Who knows how long Black Sabbath with Dio Heaven and Hell would have lasted or if the new album with Ozzy, 13, would even have happened if Dio hadn't died of stomach cancer in 2010. An attempt to continue for at least one more show with Glenn Hughes and some Norwegian dude whose name escapes me on vocals was weakly received and pretty much closed the book on the third and final (and frankly most harmonious) Dio era.