Black Sabbath: Dehumanizer

Black Sabbath: Dehumanizer

This disc was a reunion between Black Sabbath and Ronnie James Dio.

I bought it during the summer of 1992 while between semesters at Ball State University. That summer I was taking a math class through Purdue University at IUPUI. The class was called "Brief Survey of Calculus" and was geared primarily to business majors. I studied hard and earned an A. It was the first ever A I earned in a math class. This was my first experience with Purdue University and I left the class being significantly impressed by the teacher, who was probably a grad student looking to teach math full time. I am 100% sure that this is where the seed to get a Purdue degree was planted. There was also a young lady that I had a pretty good rapport with in this class, but she told me she had a boyfriend. It was probably true. One thing I remember most about my 20's is that 99.999999999% of the women I met had boyfriends, even the completely unattractive and bitchy ones. Sometimes it seemed like 'especially the unattractive and bitchy ones'.

Later on that year, my friend Matt Socey, a friend of his, I went to go see Black Sabbath on the dehumanizer tour. He actually scored a press pass for himself because he wrote for the school newspaper. He interviewed the opening band Exodus before the show and they were gracious enough to let me sit on the interview. It was quite and experience for me. I got to meet thrash metal legends and get in their tour bus. Their lead singer Steve Souza told us lots of tales and the history of the band and also how he used to be in the band that eventually became Testament. The most interesting thing Steve Souza told us was that he went Ronnie James Dio's 50th birthday party that summer. This blew my mind because, I knew Ronnie was a little older than your average rock star, but not that much older. This meant that Ronnie James Dio was much, much closer in age to my parents than he was to me. Holy generation gap, Batman!

Matt got to meet Ronnie James Dio and Tony Iommi after the show. I had brought a copy of Dehumanizer with me to get signed by the band because I knew this in advance. I'm 99% sure this was the last concert I had attended with Matt Socey. This was probably the most memorable one although seeing Judas Priest, Megadeth & Testament from the 2nd row was pretty memorable too. As I said before Matt has done well for himself as a music and movie critic. You can hear him deliver public radio goodness on WFYI radio in Indianapolis, IN (Check out my post on Mr. Big for more info about Matt Socey)

Musically, this disc still kicks ass and totally destroys Ozzy's 'No More Tears' disc. There is nothing on Dehumanizer that even resembles a power ballad. And the fact that neither Ronnie James Dio or Black Sabbath were pulling a fake retirement stunt gives them 100x the metal credibilty that Ozzy had in 1991.