Dio - Sacred Heart (1985)^{Release ID: 424}

The early 80’s had been a prosperous time for the New York heavy metal scene with the likes of Riot, The Rods, Manowar, Virgin Steele, Wendy O. Williams & the Plasmatics giving local metalheads a fair bit to be proud of. But there can be little doubt as to who was the undisputed king of New York heavy metal during the first half of the decade, & that was a short Italian-American with an enormous heart & a monumental voice in former Elf, Rainbow & Black Sabbath front man Ronnie James Dio.

Ronnie’s first two records with his own band Dio (1983’s “Holy Diver” & 1984’s “The Last In Line”) had gone on to become instant classics so expectations were very high when it came time to release Dio’s third album, 1985’s “Sacred Heart”, which would mark the last time that Dio would sport their classic lineup. I have to admit that while I definitely enjoyed “The Last In Line”, I did find it to be very much “Holy Diver” part 2 only not quite as impressive. So the question was… would “Sacred Heart” be the record that saw Dio start to take some risks or would we simply get another by-the-numbers Dio record. Well the answer is very much the latter with the differentiators between albums only relatively minor in the overall scheme of things.

The production job on “Sacred Heart” isn’t overly polished & has a nice grit to it that adds a little rock ‘n’ roll street cred & the performances are all high class as usual with Ronnie’s classic vocal stylings being the clear focal point as usual. But despite his clear talents, it’s very hard to overlook that fact that he’d started to repeat himself over the last two records. As with “The Last In Line”, there are some very familiar sounding tracks & phrasings included on “Sacred Heart” with Ronnie seeming to subconsciously veer towards his comfort zones far too often & this leaves the record sounding more than a little like I’ve heard it all before.

I’ve often referred to guitarist Vivian Campbell as one of the most underrated axe-men of the 80’s & you can easily see why with another strong performance here. I’m a big fan of his exciting & predominantly shreddy approach & he’s always been one of the big drawcards of the early Dio records for me. Dio has often suggested that Vivian had already checked out mentally by the time the album was recorded & that the two of them were struggling to see eye to eye which doesn’t surprise me given Ronnie’s reputation for being somewhat of a control freak. This would be the last Dio album to feature Vivian who would later go on to a successful career with artists like Lou Gramm, Whitesnake, Thin Lizzy & Def Leppard. But despite all of the similarities to Ronnie’s previous works I mentioned earlier, there’s one clear differentiator with “Sacred Heart”… & that’s the inclusion of some blatantly commercial material.

Now Dio-fronted records have always contained a strong hard rock element. “Holy Diver” was roughly a 50/50 proposition between hard rock & heavy metal while “The Last In Line” saw that equation leaning further towards the metal side of things. “Sacred Heart” sees the ratio returning to the more balanced “Holy Diver” one only this time a few of the more rock-driven tracks venture further over towards a cheesy AOR sound & this is to the detriment of the album overall. Ronnie doesn’t sound comfortable singing over the more blatantly radio-friendly material & the two worst offending tracks (“Hungry For Heaven” & “Shoot Shoot”) are possibly the weakest of the first three Dio albums. The title track on the other hand is the equal of anything we’d heard from the band thus far & there are a number of other strong tracks included too. So I guess it’s fair to say that we’re lacking the consistency that was such a strong feature “Holy Diver” & while “The Last In Line” sported a similar quantity of weaker tracks, I don’t think they descended quite as far below an acceptable quality line as they do here.

So overall, whilst I find "Sacred Heart" to be a pretty enjoyable listen, there can be no denying that it takes Dio another step down from “The Last In Line”, which had itself taken a step down from the impressive heights of “Holy Diver”. It’s a long way from a disappointment but simply serves as a passable heavy rock record that’s overstepped its mark with regard to its commercial ambitions & subsequently fails to challenge its audience all that much. At a time when metal was consistently reaching for new levels of extremity, Dio would need to give us something fresh next time or risk disappearing into the realm of dad rock.