The Last in Line

After Ronnie James Dio waved buhbye to Black Sabbath, everyone had either high or low hopes about his "solowork". Would it be as good as his work on Black Sabbath? (namely Heaven & Hell) While the band does in fact go by his artist name, it's not his band. They just used that name for attention, as have been stated several places. We all know the story; Holy Diver was released and everyone fell on their knees in worship of Dio.

But then what? Topping that release would seem impossible, but they most certainly did a good job trying. Personally, I never really got into a couple of songs of the Holy Diver, namely Gypsy and Caught in the Middle, and this record makes up for that. Not a single song on Last in Line I would deem "filler" or "not interesting" (Mystery is a bit inferior compared to the rest, though). On here, we have the classics "We Rock", "I Speed at Night" and "Egypt". These are the songs that makes this album.
So, what's different from Holy Diver? Not much. Production wise it's the same. Ronnie is still the king of metal vocals (obviously he's sharing the throne with a number of others, but you know what I mean) and sadly, the bass is indifferent. It's not that outstanding bass lines are actually common in heavy metal, anyway.

This is pretty much Holy Diver, the second, since most of their stuff sounds the same. A couple of tracks on this release are a bit faster than those you'd find on Holy Diver, and Egypt is their most epic sounding song.
This release is worth getting if you liked Holy Diver, or pretty much everything else Dio released. Actually, there is no excuse for not owning this album, except "I spent my money on Holy Diver and booze and drugs".



As stated before, this is not quite as good as Holy Diver, but I don't think anyone realistically expected that.

Download if you must: We Rock, I Speed at Night, Egypt