Heaven & Hell

The first two Ronnie James Dio-fronted Black Sabbath albums, 1980’s Heaven and Hell and 1981’s Mob Rules, are receiving deluxe reissues via Rhino Records.

A sequel to the 2004 set Black Box: The Complete Original Black Sabbath 1970-1978, Rules of Hell rounds up all the Black Sabbath albums with Ronnie James Dio, beginning with 1980's Heaven and Hell and its 1981 follow-up Mob Rules, spending two discs on the 1982 live album Live Evil, then skipping forward a decade for Dehumanizer, Sabbath's reunion with Dio…

Themes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is the fourth studio album by Norwegian experimental collective Ulver. Produced with Kristoffer Rygg, together with Knut Magne Valle and Tore Ylwizaker, it was issued on December 17, 1998 via Jester Records. It is a musical setting of William Blake's poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The album blended electronics, industrial music elements, progressive metal and avant-garde rock, adding ambient passages, following Blake's plates as track indexes. Stine Grytøyr, Ihsahn, Samoth and Fenriz all feature as guest vocalists.The album received widespread acclaim from critics within both the rock/metal and alternative music press - being awarded Album of the Month in several high-profile magazines such as Terrorizer, Metal Hammer, and Rock Hard and ranked very highly in their end of year's best polls. However, the album’s transitional nature perhaps alienated many fans of the band’s first three albums - causing a backlash from the black metal scene.Controversial director of films Kids and Gummo, Harmony Korine, recently commented, alluding to The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: "There's a real lineage from a composer like Wagner to a band like Ulver."

Capping nearly three decades on the scene, Sum 41 bid farewell the only way they really could: merging their punk and metal extremes on the sprawling double album Heaven :x: Hell. All those years of stylistic evolution collide on this 20-song collection, which is split evenly into the pop-punk Heaven side and the metal-leaning Hell side (naturally). Finding the sweet spot among Billy Talent, Green Day, and blink-182, this is standard, anthemic pop-punk goodness, designed for pogo-bops, fist-pumping, and light moshing, all centered on Deryck Whibley's acrobatic vocals. The big singalong choruses of catchy standouts like "Dopamine" and "Bad Mistake" ride Frank Zummo's freewheeling drumming, as the twin guitar attack of Dave Baksh and Tom Thacker propel this track headlong into the sunset. Heaven, according to Sum 41, sounds fun, urgent, and energetic (even when the lyrics say otherwise)…