Dio – Strange Highways – 1995
Metallica really invigorated the medium, didn’t they? All that 80s pop-metal posturing has been tossed out the window in the 90s as bands like Sabbath, Ozzy and Dio go for a harder and harder sound.
Strange Highways opens, as so many Dio records do, with the barn burner “Jesus, Mary and the Holy Ghost”. It’s less a song than it is a laceration, an open wound bleeding with contempt for that who inflicted the wound in the first place. It’s followed by some of the most aggressive and ugly music the genre can muster. “Firehead” is not only hard to listen to, it’s difficult to follow. It’s as though Dio has decided in the war of Metallica vs Megadeth, he will follow the latter. Only to turn back to his Iron Maiden stylings with the epically sludgy title track.
I think I just don’t like Dio. There’s so little to hold on to. it’s like every album is another take on the same themes and style. Which is to say, it all sounds like Ripper Owens era Priest to me now. Well, maybe not Demolition. But it’s just as ugly on the inside.
Grade: C-
ASide: Jesus Mary and the Holy Ghost
BlindSide: Give her the Gun
DownSide: Evilution
