Heavy Metal Guitar Bible

It's almost a blessing that, for legal reasons, this four-piece can't call itself Black Sabbath. It only serves to hammer home the point that with Ronnie James Dio up front and Vinny Appice in back, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler express a very different side of their musical personalities than they ever did with Ozzy Osbourne on vocals and Bill Ward on drums. Where the original lineup was an ultra-heavy blues band, with a rhythm section that never failed to swing (OK, they failed a little bit on "Sweet Leaf"), when Dio came on board in 1980 the group was reinvented as a heavy metal juggernaut. While Iommi's riffs remained crushingly heavy, the rhythms got faster on songs like "Neon Knights," "Turn Up the Night," and "Mob Rules," and the lyrics abandoned the earthly concerns of "Paranoid" and "Hand of Doom" for Dio's abstract symbolism and myth-making.

Dragontown continues the assault of Alice Cooper's gift to the new millennium that was Brutal Planet. Considered a third chapter of a trilogy initiated by 1994's The Last Temptation, this shadowy production plays like hardcore in slow motion. There is no one identifiable song like "Gimme" or "Brutal Planet" from the last episode, but the production values are high and the innovative riffs consistent. This work stands on its own, chock-full of the dark prince of pop's nasty humor. "It's Much Too Late" is supposed to be for John Lennon, but the Beatlesque backing vocals sound like Carole King's hit from Tapestry on hard drugs. There are references to the sacrilege spread out over Lennon's work from Plastic Ono Band to Imagine, but here Alice takes off the gloves and gives the church the finger: "I'm sending you all to hell/I'm tired and I'm wired here…."

Tommy Heart is no other than the voice of legendary melodic hard rockers Fair Warning. With Fair Warning released many great records and put his mark in this scene with his amazing vocal range. He was also, the singer of ZENO and released some strong records with Soul Doctor. Dec 21 2016 was released his debut solo album with the title "Spirit Of Time". In this record, Tommy Heart is doin' the thing that knows better than ever; he delivers quality and top class melodic rock/hard rock gems. For this debut, Heart gathers his pals from Fair Warning (Andy Malecek, Helge Engelke and Torsten Luederwaldt) but, also, Tommy Denander (Radioactive), Oliver Hartmann (Avantasia, At Vance) and Leif Sundin (Treat).