Dio
Inferno: Last in Live (Mayhem)
by Scott Hefflon
Mayhem musta signed this sucker before CMC could, either that or Dio still had a contract to fulfill after Angry Machines. Perhaps Mayhem locked the bellowing dwarf into releasing something of value to save what little face Ronnie James Dio has left after releasing a “modern metal” record such as Angry Machines, which does nothing for Dio’s legend-wandering-toward-oblivion (but not quickly enough, dammit!) status and still has nothing at all to do with the here and now. “Intentional” and “forced” are two words that come to mind before getting back to the matter at hand: ’80s nostalgia.
Inferno: Last in Live cruises through crushing versions of such classics as “Straight Through the Heart,” “Holy Diver,” “Heaven and Hell,” “Stand Up and Shout,” “The Last in Line,” “Rainbow in the Dark,” “The Mob Rules,” “Man on the Silver Mountain,” and “We Rock.” There are other songs (I bailed during/after Sacred Heart – Dio at their peak, evidently, but not to those of us who saw the regurgitation of imagery, the rewriting of “hit” songs, and a glossified-yet-thin production [think Def Leppard, if I may be so cruel]), but these are the only ones that really matter. All else is filler, much like most of Dio’s later records. But let that not discourage you – there’s more than enough here, especially if you never went back and got all these records on CD. If you can put up with RJD’s babble and all the plugging of new songs, the production of this CD is truly heavy and makes for a fist-pumping listen.
With classic tracks from Dio’s stint in Rainbow (three albums and a live record) like “Man on the Silver Mountain,” “Mistreated,” (written by Richie Blackmore and David Coverdale) and “Long Live Rock and Roll” (I’m embarrassed to admit I didn’t know Rainbow wrote this oft-covered tune), Dio shows his history in long and boring (by current standards, to be fair) trudge rock. The whole ’70s self-indulgent soloing (not the whiz-kid fluttering of their ’80s offspring with silly hair and spandex) and heavy-handed riffing always kept me from enjoying more “classic rock.” Not to dis an entire decade of hard rock, obviously, but when the songs smoked, they should be remembered, and when they droned on and on, hey, perhaps MTV and speed (in its many forms) have affected my temperament/ attention span, but I just can’t sit through a plodding dirge that ain’t evil, spooky, has no stomp or skip to it, and generally just oozes out of the speakers like molasses. True, Black Sabbath’s “hits” (later period greats such as “H&H” and “The Mob Rules” but not “Neon Knights,” “Children of the Sea” [oh, for shame!], and “Turn Up the Night”) sometimes shambled like a big, scary monster (why do you think it was called “heavy” metal?), but there were usually lively guitar riffs to offset the bellow of the ponderous, lethargic beast. Sure, rolling thunder is dramatic, but give me a little of the juice, the manic blazing of lightning filling the sky, racing your pulse with the deadly electricity coursing through the air.
On the first two (the only two, according to some of us) Dio albums, RJD knew how to take his magical, metaphysical mumbo jumbo lyrics and work them into songs that had both huge powerchords (so he could perch himself on monitors, point at things, and yell “Look out!”) and wild riffing that probably paved the way for speedmetal/tech metal. When you’ve got a fast-fingered ace like Vivian Campbell in yer band, it’s kinda hard to make him repeat sludgy chords for long. But Inferno: Last in Live makes the mistake of trying to tie the very old (much of which stinks of stale pot smoke) with the very new (which just plain stinks). But that middle ground is great. And it’s a hoot to hear Ronnie-boy do all that charmingly goofy “metal scat” – a barrel-chested version of “whoa-whoa-yeah-yeah-whoa-oh-whoa” – and various other metal tomfoolery.
(Mayhem)
