Between Heaven And Hell

Heaven & Hell was issued on Philips in 1969, on the back of an earlier single,'Tobacco Ash Sunday'. This Traffic-influenced song was written by Terry Stamp (later in Third World War and also a solo artist) and was recently covered by Paul Weller. Heaven & Hell has never officially been reissued on CD. Now Esoteric are proud to announce that the album has finally been re-mastered from the original tapes, and expanded with four mono mixes issued across two singles. For the first time, the sleeve-notes tell the story of this obscure protoprogressive rock band from Stevenage, Hertfordshire who emerged out of the remnants of the Freightliner Blues Band.

With Black Label Society, guitarist and one-time Ozzy sideman Zakk Wylde found a lasting home for his ferocious metal picking. Formed in the late '90s, the outfit features a rotating lineup and Wylde taking on the bulk of the instruments. At its heart a Southern metal band, BLS melds the whiskey-soaked spirit of '70s rockers like Lynyrd Skynyrd with the unleashed chaos of '80s thrashers such as Slayer…

Here it is, the unholy quartet back in all its glorious ugliness with the name it should have had all along. Heaven & Hell are comprised of guitarist Tony Iommi, fuzz and buzz bassist Geezer Butler, drummer Vinny Appice, and vocalist Ronnie James Dio. The former pair were founding members of doom metal lords Black Sabbath, of course. Dio is best known as the lead singer of Elf, and then Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, and Vinny Appice was Rick Derringer's drummer before joining these three lads in a new version of Sabbath after Ozzy Osbourne and Bill Ward left. This quartet issued a total of three recordings together, Heaven & Hell (1980), Mob Rules (1981), and Dehumanizer (1992).