Support:
Iced Earth
Lamb of God
Well I only got the ticket for this on the day thanks to an guy on MetalIreland had a spare one and spent most of the day hanging out with Astrid and Brian as I wasn’t pushed to see IE or LoG. Then I get a text at 6pm "You going to Dio in Wembley tonight?" from Kenwood Kettle. My reply was "Yes and if you are I’m going to kill you". Unsurprisingly Dom and Ken had come over to see H&H (initially like me actually to see Dillinger Escape Plan) and left it till the last minute to tell me (muppets). Anyway I eventually met them at Wembley at 8 and we headed in (they were on IE’s guestlist). We’d missed the two supports at this stage but meh.
Any Messrs Dio, Iommi, Butler and Appice walked on to the stage at 9pm and started just blasting through the hits. Now the last time this line-up played together they were called Black Sabbath and as such were playing tracks from the entire BS back catalogue. Due to a conflict they are now Heaven & Hell and only play tracks from the 3 albums the Dio era recorded (Heaven & Hell, Mob Rules and Dehumanizer). Now I’ve seen the 70s/Ozzy era Sabbath do their thing but I’d still like to see Dio doing some of the Ozzy tunes.
OK so no non-Dio tunes, so what? The three albums they have to choose from are Metal classics so with tracks like Heaven & Hell, Mob Rules, Neon Knights, Sign of the Southern Cross and Die Young meant that this gig was an hour and a half of rocking song after rocking song, drum solos, guitar solos and pure metal charisma. These guys played longer and better than most younger bands I’ve ever seen.
There are rumours of a new album and a tour maybe next year (although the original Sabbath lineup are meant to be touring too). No matter what happens if you get a chance to see Dio either solo or with these guys do it. Hopefully next year I will see "Black Sabbath" again but who do I want Ozzy or Dio? Good question.
Photos here.
Later days,
Halo.