DIO
Evil Or Divine: Live In New York City
(Spitfire Records)
79:19min

No matter if you like Ronnie James Dio or not – someone that has been around for so long and never betrayed his roots definitely deserves a lot of respect! To me it’s furthermore really amazing that a man of his age can still pull it off vocally so well. A good proof of his incredible and still very powerful voice is this live album that was recorded almost at the end of DIO’s "Killing The Dragon" world tour in mid December 2002 in New York City. Kinda strange for a traditional Metal act to record a live album in the US these days as the bigger crowds for this kinda music are overhere in Europe for sure where DIO always had a loyal following. But anyway, the band’s line-up (next to Ronnie) consisted of wellknown names such as Doug Aldrich (guitar), Jimmy Bain (bass) and Simon Wright (drums), while Scott Warren (keyboards) was pretty much unknown to me so far. But they all deliver a very solid job, if you exclude ‘Man Of The Silver Mountain’, whose original feeling for some reason no DIO line-up was really able to get across so far. Songs that made it into the setlist are mostly eternal classics of the band, such as ‘Stand Up And Shout’, ‘Holy Diver’, ‘The Last In Line’, ‘Don’t Talk To Strangers’ or ‘We Rock’, mixed with the usual BLACK SABBATH tunes ‘Heaven And Hell’ and ‘Children Of The Sea’ as well as RAINBOW’s ‘Long Live Rock’n’Roll’ and the already mentioned ‘Man Of The Silver Mountain’. The only newer tunes that got incorporated are ‘Killing The Dragon’, ‘Push’ and ‘Rock’nRoll’, but the hurting truth is that none of them reaches the class of the older material. But all in all this is definitely a great selection of songs and a nice addition to the band’s previous live album "Dio’s Inferno – The Last In Live".

Frank Stöver

Frank Stöver

Related reviews / interviews:
DIO - Holy Diver Live (Frank Stöver)

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