Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
When the barricades fall, when the moat is breached and the battlements tumble, what is left is the remaining line of defence, it is to those that salvation is sought and it is those that the fight is strengthened, fortified and resolute in their determination to hold the line so that the ignorant and the unaware cannot take over completely; there after all must be something worth living for.
The heroics of the Last In Line are never forgotten and it is to three of the members of Dio, Jimmy Bain, Vivian Campbell and Vinny Appice and with Andrew Freeman giving his absolute all as the vocalist with the huge responsibility in preserving the idea and memory of the much missed Ronnie James Dio, that the 21st Century owes the thanks for defending and regaling in the majesty of the album Heavy Crown.
Unlike Shakespeare’s Henry IV’s musing soliloquy where he suggests that the crown and the kingdom are made to become so heavy that the wearer is drowning in his inability to rest, Last in Line wear and defend the crown as if Morpheus has been slain and left to rot by the side of the road as the march forward to inevitable triumph is pre-ordained. That is not to say that the album was ever intended to be seen as some accomplishment that would be anything other than a joy as four friends jammed together as if appease the God’s annoyance at the world’s lack of good hard rock, yet the journey undertaken, from small studio sessions to this offering of sublime forceful pounding, is to be seen as the right to wear that Heavy Crown.
Stunning moments of pleasure such as Martyr, Burn This House Down, the excellent I Am Revolution, Already Dead and the album’s title track all combine to break the listener’s resistance and allow the forming of a new bond, the reaching out between powerful allies, the enthusiast and aficionado and the providers of the security of the rock realm, those who defend to the last person the right to listen to the refuge of the devotee.
The sound of Dio lives on in the form of the Last in Line and it is a form of music that gets down deep and dirty but with a he smile upon its face.
Last In Line’s Heavy Crown is released via Frontiers Music SRL on Friday 19th February.
Ian D. Hall