By JAY ROBERTS

The Cassette Chronicles is a continuing series of mini reviews and reflections on albums from the 1980’s and 1990’s. The aim of this series is to highlight both known and underappreciated albums from rock, pop and metal genres from this time period through the cassette editions of their releases. Some of the albums I have known about and loved for years, while others are new to me and were music I’ve always wanted to hear. There will be some review analysis and my own personal stories about my connection with various albums. These opinions are strictly my own and do not reflect the views of anyone else at Limelight Magazine.

DIO – HOLY DIVER (1983)

Given the fact that Holy Diver, the debut studio album from Dio, is to this day acknowledged as the best album the group did and remains a defining moment in the career of singer Ronnie James Dio, I don’t think it is going to shock anyone if I get the spoiler alert portion of this article out of the way early.

That is to say I absolutely love this album! Of course, I was late in getting around to the album because the first time I heard a Dio release was the Dream Evil album which came out four years after Holy Diver.
But on this first album, when you combine Dio’s vocals with Vivian Campbell’s guitar playing, Jimmy Bain on bass and Vinny Appice on the drums, you definitely get a full-on metal assault that stands the test of time.

Whether or not it was expected to go down that way when the album was originally released, I have no idea. But I know that I still get excited each time I go to put this album on.

The music for Holy Diver was written by the four individual members in varying combinations while Ronnie James Dio wrote all the lyrics. And it is the lyrics that really stand out to me. I mean as a whole within each song and then with each track also having some killer individual lyrical lines that continue to blow me away even now. They have just struck a chord with me so that each time I hear them, I get this little jolt of memory from the first time I heard the words.

The first side of the cassette opens with the song “Stand Up and Shout”, which is ball of kinetic energy tossed into a crowd like a grenade. It bursts out of the speakers and wastes little time in getting the listener amped up. I can’t imagine anyone not jumping out of their seats when you hear this song. The anthemic exhortations feel just as empowering now as they did in 1983. And I love the opening line, “It’s the same old song / You’ve gotta be somewhere at sometime /And they never let you fly”.

The album’s title cut comes up next and while the video for the song isn’t exactly what you would call “great”, it was always a thrill to see it come on MTV back in the day. It’s still one of the most popular Dio tracks and while it is not quite as revved up in terms of tempo as “Stand Up and Shout”, the song still has a highly charged uptempo feel to it. As for a killer lyrical line I think “Between the velvet lies / there’s a truth that’s hard as steel” is great one.

The song “Gypsy” is a solid rocker that lets the band shine nicely as a whole. And the verse: “Well I rolled the bones / To see who’d own /My mind and what’s within /And it’s a given rule / That we’re all fools /But need to have a little sin” always manages to catch my ear.

I could be wrong about this but I think the song “Caught in the Middle” is a bit of an overlooked track in the Dio catalog. But I actually like this song a lot. I like the uptempo pacing and I think Vivian Campbell’s playing on this one is really cool. To top it off, I like Dio’s vocal performance here a lot as well. And the lyrical line “Looking inside of yourself / You might see someone you don’t know / Maybe it’s just what you need / Letting the river I know that’s in you flow” seems rather like a positive affirmation kind of lyric without being the kind of cheesy that would make one’s eyes roll.

The first side of the album closes out with “Don’t Talk To Strangers” which is another classic Dio track of the first order. I love the way the song opens with a vastly slower and more dramatic tempo but then blows up into a take-no-prisoners fiery rip-roaring rocker. At times, Ronnie sounds positively vicious in his delivery. And I have to say, start to finish, the song has a killer set of lyrics though I do love the line “Don’t writing in starlight / ‘Cause the words may come out real” a lot.
As a fan of stories and words in general, I am always on the lookout for song lyrics that can just hit me out of nowhere and continually catch my ear no matter how many times I listen to the song. And the Holy Diver album never disappoints.

The second side of the album opens with “Straight Through the Heart” which is a powerfully stomping rocker. I love the first line of the song “Hanging from the cobwebs in your mind” but the verse “Oh, never tell a secret with your eyes / It’s the eyes that let you down / Tell a little truth with many lies / It’s the only way I’ve found” is just flat out awesome in my estimation.

While “Invisible” starts off with a sense of the theatrical in the song’s intro, it quickly becomes a blazingly hot high energy rocker. The storytelling that Dio does with his vocals and the song lyrics is amazing. It’s another track that I found that I love the entire set of the song lyrics. But the opening stanza when the song is far slower in tempo always gets me. It’s just incredible to hear “If your circle stays unbroken / Then you’re a lucky man /’Cause it never never never has for me / In the palace of the virgin / Lies the chalice of the soul / And it’s likely / You might find the answer there” before the band comes in hot and heavy and Dio adds an edgy growling tone to his performance with lines like “She was a photograph / Just ripped in half / A smile inside a frown”.

Chances are if you still listen to the radio, you are still hearing the song “Rainbow in the Dark” a lot. I know when I am listening to 94 WHJY out of Providence, RI, I hear the song all the time. You’ve got that instantly recognizable keyboard heavy intro leading into the song as a whole but man, just when you might think the song is a tad overplayed, you hear it again and it hits you all over again. And while I do love all of the lyrics that Ronnie James Dio is singing in the song the stanza “You’re just a picture / you’re an image caught in time / We’re a lie, you and I / “We’re words without a rhyme” is just intensely cool.

The Holy Diver album ends with the song “Shame on the Night” and it’s Jimmy Bain’s bass and Vinny Appice’s drums that not only hold down the bottom end of the track but give it that thumping whallop you hear throughout the song’s running time. It’s a much more methodical delivery that the more fast paced and in-your-face songs but no less heavy and catchy. Plus how can you not like a song that has lyrics like “Shame on the night / For places I’ve been / And what I’ve seen/ For giving me the strangest dreams / But you never let me know just what they mean”?

I can’t imagine anyone who could hear the Holy Diver album and not like it. I’m shocked if people don’t LOVE it! After time in Rainbow and Black Sabbath, Ronnie James Dio got it right once again with his solo Dio band right out of the gates. Holy Diver is an essential heavy metal album that belongs in every fan’s collection. You’ve got great music, killer lyrics and perhaps (or even likely) the all-time greatest metal singer on the mic. What more can you ask for from an album whose greatness is undisputed four decades after it came out?

NOTES OF INTEREST: The Holy Diver album has achieved at least platinum certification according to the album’s Wikipedia entry. It was remastered and reissued in 2005 through Rock Candy Records with audio of Ronnie James Dio answering questions. It was then reissued again in 2012 in a 2-disc edition that had nine bonus tracks on it.

The documentary Dio: Dreamers Never Die was released on DVD and other physical media formats on September 29th, 2023.

A graphic novel entitled Dio: Holy Diver was published by Z2 Comics in 2022. It was written by 30 Days of Night author Steve Niles with art by Scott Hampton and Bill Sienkiewicz. Its storyline focuses on what led up to the moment that is captured on the cover art for the album. I own a copy of the graphic novel and it is a decent story.

According to a September 27th news article link I saw, Dio’s widow Wendy has said that the Dio’s Disciples band will be going back out on tour in 2024.