Artist: Dio, Ronnie James
Label: SPV Records
Release: 2004
Rating: 1/5
Well, this one’s a real bummer, and not something you’d expect from Dio any time soon. Watered-down and below average. Listening to the great voice of Ronnie James Dio, all you can do is roll your eyes and wonder where on earth all that eruptive energy is gushing out of him. All the excellence that so many young guns trying to make it as rock singers want to get close to and take as their role model is packed into this gentleman of mature years. Mature years, but with a recklessly youthful spirit. Ronnie James Dio is the man who, especially with his career in Rainbow and Black Sabbath, left a fateful mark on the tracks of singing in heavy metal, hard rock and progressive metal and defined them, the very tracks all the younger vocalists happily cling to in their own vocal expression when combining power and melody.
One More For The Road is the only fast, bouncy number, made in the style of most of the tracks on the previous Dio record “Killing The Dragon” (2002). Short and aggressive right under the skin. Well, we can add the seventh song Living The Lie to that too, and after going through the rest of the material we conclude that Dio are truly sleepwalking through this record. All the other tracks are mid-tempo. The record suffers mostly from a lack of variety, since the dynamics are practically the same from start to finish. So this time Ronnie James Dio’s vocals come off very repetitive in their lines, thanks to all this songwritten “beat monotony”.
Of course Ronnie roars superbly, with undiminished ferocity, all in as ever and with none of those sinful thoughts that would lead him into some miraculous experiments, which only hurt him in the past and made life bitter for his fans, like all the clumsiness crammed onto “Angry Machines” (1996). The sound is admirably alive, and the depth of sound between the rhythm line and the massive curtain of riffing is effectively built and emphasized. But like I said, despite playing and singing with balls, the record suffers from a lack of diversity and feels extremely monotonous. The result is that listening to “Master Of The Moon” you can very quickly fall into the embrace of deep sleep. There’s quite a bit of half-step riffing on the record, which, with all the slowness of the rhythm line, drags things in the direction of what could even be doom metal. And in this case that just weighs it down. Ronnie James Dio’s melodic vocals are technically just too polished and refined, and also plain too lively, so they don’t belong in half-step riffing frameworks.
All of you who grumbled about the slightly excessive calm of “Magica” (2000), let me tell you that compared to it, “Master Of The Moon” is first-class Persen (a sedative) with the worst possible effect. No, the record doesn’t move anywhere through its entire running time of ten songs. “Killing The Dragon” with the outstanding Doug Aldrich (Whitesnake) was obviously the swan song of the vocal legend. This time Craig Goldy jumped in on guitar, who already played with Dio on “Dream Evil” (1987) and “Magica”. Goldy simply can’t match Aldrich for wit in his solos and riffing, that’s a fact. Besides this swap, the legendary bassist Jimmy Bain, with whom Ronnie went through the school of hard knocks in Rainbow, was replaced by the excellent Rudy Sarzo, known for having lived in the eighties inside one of the best rhythm duos in rock history, Sarzo/Aldridge. That duo was something the one and only Ozzy Osbourne could boast of in his lineup at the time. Sarzo’s potential stayed completely untapped on “Master Of The Moon”.
Dio obviously wanted to make the opposite of “Killing The Dragon”. The songs aren’t bad at their core, it’s just that the level of repetition and similarity between them is fatally, noticeably too high. If Dio had spread all these slow tracks across a few studio albums, using just two or three on each, it would have been a much better idea. Our consolation is the cover art, which is excellent, with an evil scaly devil and a glass orb in his claws that’s supposed to be the moon. This fiend plays with our emotions, day after day. With the album’s monotonously slow “beat”, it’s not hard to picture him lumbering around and raising hell, “comp – comp”, swaying left and right. A wobbly silhouette in the dark… I really didn’t think Ronnie James Dio would ever make such a deathly sleepy, boring album in his long career, almost without a shred of punch, adrenaline rush or predatory, penetrating riffing, which still worked flawlessly perfectly on “Killing The Dragon”. Dio! You’ve earned a failing grade, so go redo your homework! And of course, take a long break to do it.
Lineup
Ronnie James Dio – vocals
Craig Goldy – guitar
Rudy Sarzo – bass
Simon Wright – drums
Scott Warren – keyboards
Production
Ronnie James Dio
Track list
1.One More For The Road
2. Master Of The Moon
3. The End Of The World
4. Shivers
5. The Man Who Would Be King
6. The Eyes
7. Living A Lie
8. I Am
9. Death By Love
10. In Dreams
Running time: 46:13
