While certainly not as long, prolific, or influential as the Ozzy Years, Black Sabbath's stint with Ronnie James Dio merits more than a mere footnote in the band's storied history, and Rhino's THE DIO YEARS aims to rectify the oversight. When Ronnie James Dio left Rainbow and joined Sabbath in 1979, the band was rapidly becoming commercially inconsequential, and Dio was hungry to prove himself as more than Ritchie Blackmore's frontman. The resulting two studio albums, HEAVEN & HELL and MOB RULES, not only re-established Sabbath's commercially viability but also announced Dio as one of the most undeniable metal singers of his era.

THE DIO YEARS focuses almost exclusively on tracks--sterlingly remastered--from the abovementioned records, but also includes "Children of the Sea" from LIVE EVIL and a few from the 1992 reunion flop, DEHUMANIZER. The real surprises of THE DIO YEARS are "Shadow of the Wind," "The Devil Cried," and "Ear in the Wall," three new songs recorded by Sabbath with Dio shortly before the compilation's release. THE DIO YEARS is a great start for casual Sabbath fans looking to get in a little deeper or for Dio fans looking for his great Sabbath moments in one place.

The original lineup of Black Sabbath possesses such a mythic quality that it's easy to overlook how far they slid by the time Ozzy Osbourne up and left the band...or how far they rebounded after they hired Rainbow singer Ronnie James Dio as his replacement. Countless compilations over the years have preserved the initial part of the story line -- celebrating the innovations of the first four albums with a near fetishistic quality -- but there has never been a good retrospective concerning the Dio years until Rhino released the aptly titled The Dio Years in early 2007. True, the Dio years didn't last all that long -- the singer joined in 1980 for Heaven & Hell, then lasted through one more studio album, the following year's Mob Rules, before departing under a shroud of controversy after 1982's botched live album Live Evil -- but Dio had a powerful impact upon the band and its legacy; these were the last years that Sabbath exerted pull as an active band, and after his departure they stumbled through various singers over the next decade before intermittently reuniting with Ozzy in the '90s. The Dio Years proves that during his brief time with the band, Dio did help Sabbath make music that could hold its own with some of the classic lineup's finest moments. With Dio as a frontman, the band was harder, nastier, and a little faster than the slow sludge of the early Sabbath records, but it fit in nicely with the New Wave of British Heavy Metal at the beginning of the '80s and it's aged very well. Some of it can sound silly -- Dio's lyrical obsessions always do -- but this is harder, heavier, better music than either Technical Ecstasy or Never Say Die! Anybody who's refused to give this latter-day incarnation of the band the time of day might find this compilation revelatory. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine