A few times over the last few months, I’ve seen reports that Ronnie Dio is rejoining Black Sabbath, or is working with Tony Iommi again, or they’re doing a new project, etc, etc, etc.. This report has cropped up again at Blabbermouth today. It’s definitely NOT new news, as this has come up before. However, I wanted to address it anyway.
NOTE: What follows is all personal speculation and some rumour – I don’t have formal news on this as it has not been announced yet.
There’s nothing new in that story that hasn’t been said before. The last time it came up, Dio’s camp issued a statement saying that Ronnie was not rejoining Black Sabbath, just that he would probably work with him again (or something like that, I can’t find the exact words right now). “Black Sabbath: The Dio Years” could essentially be “Black Box 2” for the Dio Years. From what I can gather, it will be remastered versions of the three Dio studio Sabbath albums, plus the Live Evil album.
The story talks about recording new songs. The last time this came up, I had read where it might be new songs, or dustoffs of leftovers from the Dehumanizer sessions. Whatever they are, it’s likely stuff we haven’t heard before, so that will be a nice inclusion. There are some oddities floating around that might be interesting to include, although some of them (and I’d say definitely not the last one) might not be. They are:
- The version of ‘The Mob Rules’ that appeared on the Heavy Metal movie soundtrack
- The “Wayne’s World” version of Time Machine (as well as the album version)
- The alternate version of “Letters From Earth” that appeared on the TV Crimes CD Single
- The Live Evil concert video Ronnie mentions on the Live Evil album
- The demo version of Dehumanizer with Tony Martin on vocals ( this exists according to Garry Sharpe-Young’s book on that era of Sabbath)
That’s it for the oddities from the Dio era that I can think of. Hopefully these things can be included, but I would understand why the Martin think would not. :)
Anyway, I’ve put in a request for information from Iommi’s camp, if I get a response on this issue, I’ll have a followup.
Recent Comments