A fired bassist, a borrowed riff, and a singer who had just walked out on Black Sabbath for the second time: the sixth Dio album was born from wreckage. Ronnie James Dio, the heavy metal vocalist, released Strange Highways on October 25, 1993 in Europe, and the record arrived in America a few months later. It was the first Dio album after the short, stormy reunion of Dio and drummer Vinny Appice with Black Sabbath. The European release came through Vertigo Records, while American listeners had to wait until late January 1994, when Reprise Records brought the album out. The cover art was drawn by Wil Rees, with Ed Holding designing the logo and layout for Mainartery.
The Black Sabbath reunion that collapsed
That reunion had looked like a triumph. In 1992 Black Sabbath put out Dehumanizer, their first album with Dio and Appice since 1981, and it became the band's most commercially successful record in a decade. But the tour supporting it collapsed when Black Sabbath agreed to join Ozzy Osbourne's No More Tours run. Dio refused and left the group again. Dio and Appice simply returned to the solo band, and Strange Highways became the result.
The band Dio had changed while the singer was away. Bassist Jimmy Bain was supposed to come back, but he was fired before the sessions, and Jeff Pilson took his place. The album also introduced guitarist Tracy Grijalva, making Strange Highways a debut for two of the four musicians. With Pilson on bass and keyboards, Appice on drums, and Dio handling all the lyrics, the lineup was almost a new group wearing an old name. Among the new songs, Pain stood out as a collaboration between Appice, Dio, and Grijalva. The writing credits showed a band learning to work as a unit after so much upheaval.
With Pilson on bass and keyboards, Appice on drums, and Dio handling all the lyrics, the lineup was almost a new group wearing an old name.
One song carried a ghost from the Black Sabbath days. Parts of Hollywood Black had been recorded as a Black Sabbath demo during the Dehumanizer sessions. When Tony Iommi heard the Dio version, he admitted he did not know whether it matched his own, guessing the words were probably the same but the music likely was not. The track became a strange bridge between two bands that kept pulling apart.
Recording at Rumbo Recorders
The album was recorded at Rumbo Recorders in Los Angeles, produced and mixed by Mike Fraser, and mastered by George Marino at Sterling Sound in New York. The music was credited to all four members, with Dio writing every lyric. Strange Highways was a dense, moody record, darker than much of what Dio had done before.
Critics mostly approved. Jason Anderson of AllMusic praised Dio's voice and Grijalva's guitar work, calling the album a strong piece of work. Entertainment Weekly gave it a B−, and the Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal rated it 8 out of 10. The response suggested the new lineup had found something worth hearing, even if the commercial picture was less kind.
On the charts, Strange Highways landed at 142 on the Billboard 200 and reached 79 in Germany's Offizielle Top 100. The numbers were modest, and the commercial slide that had begun before the album continued until Dio's Magica appeared in 2000. For a band that had once filled arenas, this was a hard stretch.
Yet Strange Highways endures as the sound of Dio rebuilding after chaos. A singer who had quit Black Sabbath twice, a guitarist nobody knew, a bassist hired at the last minute, and a drummer who followed his old friend back into the fire. The album they made together was strange, heavy, and more dangerous than its chart position suggested.