Unknown Soldier

The Lowdown
Dio’s third album Sacred Heart would be one of the best selling in the band’s whole discography but it would also be one of the most contentious as well. Critically Sacred Heart would prove to be a divisive affair amongst listeners, where many were now starting to dismiss Ronnie James’ work as sounding distinctly clichéd and trying to hold onto the formula of the previous two albums. Other claims that he was distinctly pushing more and more into a commercial direction at the expense of writing pure metal classics, is somewhat more dubious in my opinion as the so-called ‘pop hits’ are not as numerous as some people seem to think. In fact nearly every Dio release from now on, would receive more and more critical knocks each time an album was released, which was often based around an old rocker trying to hold onto former glories. Now one thing I will say though about this album in its defence and I imagine that fans of the album would say something similiar, is that this is genuinely a heavy effort from the band and in large that powerful Ronnie James vibe is present across most of the material. Sadly the compact line-up of the band would come to an end here, when guitarist Vivian Campbell was fired from the band towards the end of the album’s recording and for many Dio as a band have never been quite the same since. Dio were one of the biggest metal acts around at this time and in Keeping in line with the other big metal acts of the time, the album tour was distinctly over the top, with a dragon and laser show of epic proportions, as everything in metal at this time was usually big. Now the reason why the album is here is because of the quality of some of its tracks like the title track “Sacred Heart” which literally pumps with the salubrious and powerful vocals of Ronnie James and some of Vivian Campbell’s best guitar work on the album is done here as well. The album’s big hit “Rock ‘n’ Roll Children” is one of the best singles that Dio ever put out and is a great favourite of mine especially with its ringing chorus and the third great track the energetic “Just Another Day” is the type of track that Ronnie James always did well. On the downside there are a large number of clichéd tracks and these come in the form of album opener “The King of Rock and Roll” which seems to work in similar sounding vocals from previous material and comes with a dated in-concert opening intro which was created in the studio, but the song does rock hard. There are so so tracks like “Another Lie” which is a lower tempo rocker that sounds like it would be more at home on a Deep Purple or Rainbow album. The single “Hungry for Heaven” again reworks earlier ‘pop metal’ that the band had done before and most notably “Mystery” from the previous album is the obvious reference here. Songs such as “Like the Beat of a Heart” is similar to “Straight Through the Heart” from Holy Diver and I'm pretty meh over both "Fallen Angels" and the poppy sounding album closer "Shoot Shoot". Overall if you don’t mind clichéd metal and a truckload of fantasy lyrics and the album's pop metal leanings, then Dio’s Sacred Heart is a fairly rewarding album based on its stronger tracks, which admittedly are in the minority here.

Ronnie James Dio- Vocals
Vivian Campbell- Guitar
Jimmy Bain- Bass
Claude Schnell- Keyboards
Vinnie Appice- Drums

Production- Ronnie James Dio

__________________
Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History