Dio Album: “Evil or Divine: Live in New York City”

This is one of the very best live concerts from Dio that I have ever heard!! The track list is the best, some from the older ablums which almost all dio fans including myself love and some from the new like killing the dragon. The recording of this concert is great, nice high levels without distorting and not to low, you can hear all of the players!!! And to make this live preformace even better we have a awesome guitarist Doug Aldrich!! I have been playing guitar for about 14 years and try to follow all the greats, malmsteen, vai, greg howe, petrucci, satriani, ects, I feel that this is the best guitar player Dio has ever had, the licks, riffs, chops Doug can make are awesome, a nice full bodied sound, one of the best guitar players!! a really great live cd!!!! Buy it now you won't be sorry!!!!

but the DVD is better. The mixing is good... could have used a little more crowd noise though. I'm sure I'm being biased since I already had the DVD & am unfairly comparing it to just the disc, but you can't really feel the crowd on the CD.

This is a great live cd probally one of the best ever. Dio gives a flawless performance with tunes from his Rainbow days, his Sabbath Days , and all the DIO fav's up to killing the dragon. Amazing album get this one now!

Reviewed in three areas: sound production, quality of performances, and set list.

The sound production on this particular release is just as good the Dio "Last in Live" (which is really saying something). It has a slightly different sound but is equally good, all musicians are mixed together well and the sound is loud and crisp.

Doug Aldrich is the guitarist. For classic metal he is currently the best guitarist out there who is actually still willingly to play it. It seems that Viv Campbell has taken a turn for the worse in what he's doing with Def Leppard, but Aldrich plays the old Campbell tunes to the same level. I understand as of 2005, Aldrich is with the new incarnation of Coverdale's Whitesnake. He certainly sounds better than the comparatively sloppy play offered by Tracy G on "Inferno: Last n Live". The absence of Vinny Appice is apparent, but former ACDC man Simon Wright does well on the skins. Jimmy Bain and Scott Warren sound great, also. The only problem is that Dio does not do as well on the older tunes as he does on the new ones from Killing the Dragon or Magica. He is obviously getting old (now in his 60's) and I take off a star for the reason that his voice begins to fail him about half way through the concert. It would have been wiser to have some backing vocals on the chorus for "Last in Line" and others.

The set list is terrific. Less Sabbath tunes, more Dio. Way to go.

Final analysis:

Sound Production: 10/10

Performance of Songs: 7.5/10 (only because Dio begins to lose his voice on some of the classics and He sings Holy Diver in a "choppy" way that ruins it).

Set List: 9/10

A nice setlist here of modern Dio, a bunch of classics featured here, plus a couple of my recent favs in "Push", and "Fever Dreams".

Very long guitar solo is a nice inclusion near the middle, and of course a bunch of classics like mentioned in "Rainbow In The Dark", "Holy Diver" (great version of that one here also), and probably my all time fav Dio song "The Last In Line" which is my fav version of this one also, perhaps you will never, never, never-never, never-never, never-never want to hear the studio version again..just kidding, but I love that part of the song.

Great CD of Live Dio still going strong, still sounds like he's got the same fire he had years ago as he belts out song after song and puts as much effort into the new ones as he does the classics. This is a hard rock/metal arena rock of old...sizzling guitars, solo's extended and featured throughout, and anthems pummeling you one after another. Dio will never be outdated, these songs are timeless classics in the hard rock/metal genre that probably wouldn't go over today with the music buying public for the most part feeling they are too smart to absord such simple pleasures and primal feeling of gasp..."joy" to rock. We listen to this to celebrate life, and if we are down ...it makes us feel better, no matter how silly you all think it is, we rock!