Black Sabbath: The Marriage of Heaven
& Hell. Sophiensale, Vienna, Austria. 24.04.80
Description
This is the
first concert of the Heaven and Hell tour and the first concert featuring Ronnie
James Dio fronting Black Sabbath, for me the sound is poor
and more worth for the historical point of view than the sound of itself.
From Sabbathlive:
"This is the earliest known live recording of the
new Sabbath lineup, featuring Ronnie James Dio on
lead vocals and Geoff Nicholls on keyboards. It’s a good, but a bit distant
sounding audience recording that is fairly rough around the edges. Recorded a
good distance from the P.A., there is a good bit of reverb + some slight to
moderate distortion in the sound. Flawed as it may be, the Vienna '80 tape
allows us to hear the opening night of the HEAVEN AND HELL tour, warts and all!
If you've already listened to many of the later shows from this tour, you'll be
amazed at how much the band evolved from this 1st night to some of those
amazing tour end performances (such as London '81 and Nagoya '80).
Ronnie is still adjusting to the Ozzy
era material and Nicholls’ keyboards sound much more prominent in the mix than Woodroffe’s were back in the 70’s. They are surprisingly
high in the mix during "War Pigs", the opening number. At 1:27, Ronnie flubs a line in "War
Pigs", singing "ashes where the bodies burning" instead of
"as the war machine keeps turning". But heck, this was his first
official gig with the band and all!
Being that this was the first show of the tour, it was also the live
debut for the HEAVEN AND HELL album tracks, including “Neon Knights”, “Children
Of The Sea”, “Lonely Is The Word”, “Heaven And Hell” and “Die Young”. “Lady
Evil” wasn’t trotted out until October (Detroit 10/5/80) and the remaining
songs (“Walk Away” and “Wishing Well”) were apparently never performed
live. “Sweet Leaf” returns to the set
list for the first time since November 1974. Ronnie delivers this old classic
with the fervor of a gospel singer, which is sharp contrast to Ozzy’s easy sing-a-long style. I suppose this is really a
matter of personal taste, but the Dio era rendition
of “Sweet Leaf” never did much for me. I dare say that hearing Ronnie sing it
is almost humorous, both because of the style he uses and the lyrics he has to
sing. A paean to marijuana just doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that Ronnie
would fancy singing every night. Regardless, the song remained in the set list through
the very end of the HEAVEN AND HELL world tour. It was used as the showcase for
the drum solo, after which the band would reprise the song once more."
Audience Recording, Quality -7
Song list
CD1
SUPERTZAR
WAR PIGS
NEON KNIGHTS
N.I.B.
CHILDREN OF THE SEA
SWEET LEAF
BILL WARD SOLO
SWEET LEAF (REPRISE)
LONELY IS THE WORD
CD2
BLACK SABBATH
HEAVEN AND HELL
IRON MAN
TONY IOMMI SOLO
DIE YOUNG
PARAONID
CHILDREN OF THE GRAVE
Do you want to trade it, mail me: vegueta37@yahoo.com