Dio Shm

Sacred Heart is the third studio album by American heavy metal band Dio. It was released on August 12, 1985, on Warner Bros. Records in North America, and Vertigo elsewhere. The record peaked at No. 29 on the Billboard 200 chart. It includes the singles "Rock 'n' Roll Children" and "Hungry for Heaven".

After playing a major role in five positively classic heavy metal albums of the late '70s and early '80s (three with Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow and two with Black Sabbath), it seemed that singer Ronnie James Dio could truly do no wrong. So it wasn't all that surprising – impressive, but not surprising – when he struck gold yet again when launching his solo vehicle, Dio, via 1983's terrific Holy Diver album. Much like those two, hallowed Sabbath LPs, Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules, Holy Diver opened at full metallic throttle with the frenetic "Stand Up and Shout," before settling into a dark, deliberate, and hypnotic groove for the timelessly epic title track – a worthy successor to glorious triumphs past like Rainbow's "Stargazer" and the Sabs' "Sign of the Southern Cross."

Ritchie Blackmore decided to pull the plug on Rainbow following the supporting tour for 1983's Bent Out of Shape. To commemorate the end of the band, he released the appropriately-titled, Finyl Vinyl. A double-record set of live recordings and a handful of studio outtakes, primarily culled from the Joe Lynn Turner era but also featuring selections with Ronnie James Dio and Graham Bonnet, Finyl Vinyl offers a haphazard alternate history designed for hardcore fans (by 1986, that's pretty much all Blackmore had left). For those fans, the album is actually quite a treat. Rainbow always sounded better on stage than they did on the studio – rawer, harder, alive – and songs that sounded half-baked in the studio, such as selections from Difficult to Cure, sound right here.

Perhaps the first example of "dragon rock" – a style perfected by bands like Iron Maiden and Dio in the early to mid-'80s – was Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, a rather pretentious 1975 collection from the guitarist's first post-Deep Purple project. Fittingly enough, a young Ronnie James Dio provides the goblin-like frontman presence required by the increasingly Baroque Blackmore…

When Ritchie Blackmore departed Deep Purple in the mid-'70s and formed Rainbow (which featured Ronnie James Dio), his replacement was Tommy Bolin. To be sure, Blackmore was a darn tough act to follow, but Bolin proved himself to be a fine guitarist in his own right on Come Taste the Band, his first album with Deep Purple…