Steffen Jungersen

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IN THE BIG SHADOW OF A LITTLE GIANT

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Colleagues pay tribute to the late, great Ronnie James Dio – unfortunately quite a few of them seem right out scared to perform in the shadow of the little giant

DIVERSE, ”Ronnie James Dio – This Is Your Life” (Rhino/ Warner)

Dansk version

This tribute to probably the best singer who ever lent his talent to Heavy Metal – the diminutive giant that was Ronnie James Dio – if nothing else underlines the fact that Dio was in a league of his own.

These thirteen accolades to/ versions of Dio material stretching from his time in Rainbow via the Black Sabbath years to the Dio band in quality goes from the unbearable to the qualified. Except for two efforts though there’s not one version here that contributes anything extra compared with the sublime originals.

The exceptions are Motörhead, who with Saxon’s Biff Byford as guest vocalist add a welcome twist of dirtiness and devil may care attitude to “Starstruck” while the absolute pinnacle of the album arrives with Metallica’s “Ronnie Rising Medley” consisting of ”A Light In The Black”, ”Tarot Woman”, ”Stargazer” and ”Kill The King”.

James Hetfield is definitely no Ronnie James Dio and Metallica are certainly not Rainbow but Lars Ulrich’s mob are clearly among the few presented here who are NOT afraid of Dio’s shadow. Instead they go all in and as usual in the case of Metallica they do what they do with unbridled enthusiasm and determination. Actually they practically make “Kill The King” in particular their own roaring thrash anthem.

Besides Motörhead and Metallica only Doro Pesch really give Ronnie real reason to smile in the Heavy Metal Heaven where he now resides. At least Doro obviously and sincerely loves what she’s doing here and keeps the original spirit alive in the gigantic sounding  hymn ”Egypt (The Chains Are On)”.

At the other end of the register we have Tenacious D.s terrible take on “The Last In Line” that only proves that these guys were not so much last in line as first in the queue to have their balls removed. While the overly hyped Halestorm simply aren’t good enough to take on “Straight Through Your Heart”. Unfortunately they do it anyway!

The rest of the contributors do all right but only just that. Without contributing anything to the originals as mentioned earlier. You get the feeling that Glenn Hughes, Adrenaline Mob, Scorpions, Killswitch Engage et al from the beginning were content with just playing it safe because they wouldn’t have a chance of escaping the little giant’s huge shadow anyway. Not quite the right attitude methinks.

Having said that ”Ronnie James Dio – This Is Your Life” deserves your support all the same. All money made by the album goes directly to ”The Ronnie James Dio Stand Up And Shout Cancer Fund” – dedicated to cancer prevention research – founded after Ronnie lost his life to stomach cancer in 2010.

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Dagens Sang

 

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Al pressekontakt, annoncering, promotion og PR varetages af Steffen Jungersen - steffen@steffenjungersen.dk

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