The Mob Rules is equal to their best Ozzy output, and it is easily the worst album Dio ever recorded with them, but I haven't heard TDYK yet.

The first "real" metal song I probably ever heard that wasn't beaten into my head from insane overplaying on the radio was likely "wishing well."

I just don't care for slow music myself, not in the heavily distorted guitar format anyway. A song has to be fairly busy on the vocals to overcome that in the mix. Even "lonely is the word" I have only heard less than a half dozen times.

I just remember being bored when I heard it for the first time and haven't really shaken that feeling since. There are production tricks to make slower songs have a faster pace than they do, but unfortunately Martin Birch just doesn't have that instinct, I don't think. And give everyone a hint that might care, boosting the bass frequencies on a slow song is a bad idea.

I do think it is a good album myself, but honestly, there are three songs on there that I like listening to and working with. The extremely boxy production demands a remix from the first bar of the first song.

And yes, it is better than any Ozzy album still. Ozzy's one octave range, BS's endless jamming early on, the long ass resonating notes and sparse use of the whole scale, mixed with a slow pace is a recipe for me not liking an album, this makes the Dio years really special for me. Dio was a producer himself and I believe helped shape that material into what it was. I don't like songs like "The Jack" by AC/DC no matter who does them.

I can't remember who it was exactly, but Geezer did not play Bass on the demos for the songs and he subsequently used those demos as guides on how to play his bass parts on H&H, I think this dramatically would have changed the pacing of the songs and it makes H&H seem faster than MR in my opinion.

Tyr