Paul Gilbert besides being a guitar player extraordinaire is also a big music fan. This album is his personal tribute to the Great late Ronnie James Dio. Gilbert innovates and instead of try and do renditions of Dio songs he prefers to make a rearrangement of the songs as the vocal lines who are impossible to change, replace even copy, even if you hire Jorn Lande as singer, he replaces the vocal lines with his guitar creating an absolute pleasurable instrumental album.
He covers a wide period of the Dio discography from the early RAINBOW to BLACK SABBATH and the DIO years.the result is as expected of high level, enjoyable , quite refreshing and keeping the listeners interest. It is not the instrumental album you'll return to many times but is definitely the covers you may add to your playlist when you don't want another copy of the Man trying to imitate his passion and delivery. The guitar playing and arrangements are as always out of this planet and for one more time Gilbert let the music fan out with great success. There are some stand out tracks in my humble opinion such as "Kill the king","Holy Diver", "Heaven and hell", "Long live Rock n Roll","Lady evil", "Last in line" i guess the high tone more uptempo or majestic with volume songs can benefit more or better by the high end "vocal" delivery of Gilbert's guitar.
Overall a nice tribute gesture showing Gilbert's inner fanboy and also his in depth musical knowledge, instinct, feeling and innovation even when he pays tribute.
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