HEAVEN AND HELL

On Friday Patrick and I went to Black Sabbaths gig at the Rod Laver Arena here in Melbourne. It was the first time they had played in Melbourne with this lineup (The great Ronnie James Dio singing) in 27 years. The opening act for Black Sabbath was Down, a band consisting of Phil Anselmo and Rex Brown from Pantera and Pepper Keenan from Corrosion of Conformity. We got there a little late so we missed the first couple of songs. Phil's voice was spot on and Down altogether produced some truly good southern metal. For the last song Pepper handed his guitar off to his guitar tech to play whilst he downed a beer and roamed the stage.
Black Sabbath were next and we couldnt wait. Neither me nor Patrick knew much of the Dio era Black Sabbath songs so we were kind of in the dark, but once they started playing we got into it. Tony Iommi was amazing and owned the stage and Dios voice was crazy huge for such a tiny little guy. The last song they played was 'Heaven and Hell' and it was one of the best songs ive ever seen live, just incredible. Check out some of the pics. There not very good cos we were fairly far back in the stands but you get the idea.

Down

And now in bright beautiful colour.

Black Sabbath

On the way back from the gig we caught the tram. We got on pretty early on so we got seats. Whilst everyone was pouring on this dude with dreads came and sat opposite us. He turned his head slowly towards us and to our astonishment he looked like a more monkey'd Blair. His face was intense.