Cries from the Quiet World: Dio "Holy Diver (1987 Reissue, Holland, Mercury Records, 811 021-2)"

sábado, 7 de marzo de 2026

Dio "Holy Diver (1987 Reissue, Holland, Mercury Records, 811 021-2)"

Holy Diver is the debut studio album by the American heavy metal band Dio, released in 1983. The album was acclaimed by the music press and is the band's most successful album.

Released on May 25, 1983, the album has been hailed by critics as Dio's best work and a classic staple in the heavy metal genre. The album was certified gold in the US on September 12, 1984, and platinum on March 21, 1989. In the UK it attained Silver certification (60,000 units sold) by the British Phonographic Industry, achieving this in January 1986, at the same time as The Last in Line.

The original vinyl release had a photomontage LP-liner, with images from both Rainbow and Black Sabbath days.

The album was remastered and re-released by Rock Candy Records in 2005. The only notable addition to the original album is an audio interview with Ronnie James Dio. Tracks 10–19 on the 2005 edition are Dio's answers to various questions about the album. The questions are not posed during the interview itself, but can be found inside the CD's booklet instead. The album, along with The Last in Line and Sacred Heart, were released in a new two-CD deluxe edition on March 19, 2012 through Universal for worldwide distribution outside the U.S.

"Caught in the Middle" shares the main guitar riff with Campbell's previous band Sweet Savage's song "Straight Through the Heart" (1983), whose title was used for another song in this album.

The album art is illustrated by Randy Berrett. It features the band's mascot Murray, a demonic creature, pulling or whipping a snapped metal chain and a Catholic priest flailing and splashing around in a body of water, wrapped up and locked in the other end of the broken chain. Dio was quick to argue that appearances are misleading, that it could just as easily be a priest killing a devil, wanting people not to "judge a book by its cover".

Murray is featured on several other Dio albums.

Around the time of making the album, a rise of heroic adventure elements in popular culture (such as J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings books and role-playing games Dungeons & Dragons) were having influence. "Much of heavy metal took place on similar turf, a realm of dark towers and impenetrable wilderness populated by battles and adversity." When Ronnie James Dio had been with Black Sabbath, "He reverently refurbished and reinvented the band's stately doom with grandiose concepts...Dio found a fertile fantasy framework for the big Sabbath themes of madness and desolation". Dio, who had read Sir Walter Scott, Arthurian tales, and science fiction growing up, had previously used fantasy lyrics in both his 1970's bands Elf and Rainbow respectively. He explained the influence of his youthful reading to an interviewer, saying, "When I became a songwriter, I thought what better thing to do than do what no one else is doing...to tell fantasy tales. Smartest thing I ever did."

The metaphor of "riding the tiger", employed in the song, is attested in a Chinese proverb translated in 1875 as "He who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount". It had previously found prominent use in John F. Kennedy's inaugural presidential speech of January 20, 1961, as well as in the titles of the far-right thinker Julius Evola's 1961 book and of the American rock band Jefferson Starship's opening song on their 1974 Dragon Fly album.

Tracklist: