Heaven & Hell

One of the noisiest and most dynamic bands of the 2000s, Heaven & Hell were the amalgamation of two members of classic Black Sabbath - guitarist Tony Iommi and bass player Geezer Butler - with two American Sabbath members from an early 1980s line-up - drummer Vinny Appice and raucous American singer Ronnie James Dio. They got together in 2006 to record three new tracks for a compilation album, Black Sabbath - The Dio Years, a project that worked so well they decided to go on tour, adopting the name Heaven & Hell from the title of an earlier Sabbath album, when Ronnie Dio was with the band first time round. It was intended as a one-off tour but was so successful that they got together again for more dates in 2008, playing on the Metal Masters Tour with Judas Priest, Motorhead and Testament and ended up recording a new studio album, The Devil You Know. It quickly broke into both the UK and US charts, was compared to the best Black Sabbath albums and featured the single Bible Black. The band was due to tour with Iron Maiden through 2010 but cancelled when Dio was diagnosed with stomach cancer and disbanded when he died in May, 2010. A posthumous live album Neon Nights: 30 Years Of Heaven & Hell, recorded in Germany, was released six months later.