VINNY APPICE Talks About First Joining BLACK SABBATH – “It Was Always ‘You’re In The Band Until Bill Ward Comes Back’”

Famed Dio, Black Sabbath and Heaven & Hell drummer, Vinny Appice, recently joined Mitch Lafon for a special YouTube edition of One On One With Mitch Lafon. In the full episode, Vinny talked his new band Last In Line (featuring Def Leppard’s Vivian Campbell, bassist Jimmy Bain and singer Andrew Freeman) and much more. In this teaser excerpt, Vinny recounts the Black Sabbath – Mob Rules days.

Appice stated: “When I first joined the band, I was a kid. I brought my drums down to audition with them in my ’67 Mustang. It started out from there and it was always ‘you’re in the band until Bill Ward comes back’. They expected him to come back. This was his baby.”

February 19th will see the release of the debut album from Last In Line, entitled Heavy Crown. Formed by three original members of Dio including Def Leppard’s Vivian Campbell (guitar), Vinny Appice (drums) and Jimmy Bain (bass) and named after Dio’s 1984 studio album, The Last In Line, the band are on a mission to bring classic hard rock to fans who can’t get enough of the real thing. The album will be released on CD, CD/DVD (including a bonus track) and digital formats. Pre-order the album here.

The official music video for the first single, “Devil In Me”, is streaming below. The single is now available as an instant grat with digital pre-orders from iTunes and AmazonMP3.

Says guitarist Vivian Campbell, “When we started this project a few years ago, the initial idea was to reunite the original Dio band to play the songs we wrote and recorded with Ronnie in the early 1980’s. Joined by Andrew Freeman on vocals, we played a handful of shows in southern California, the UK, and Japan. It was a limited ambition, but it brought us great joy in reconnecting to this great music, to each other, and to our collective history.”

“When we first got together as the Last In Line line-up, our ambition at that time didn’t extend to writing and recording any new music, says Campbell, “but when we were offered the opportunity to do so by Frontiers, we decided to enter the studio to write this new album in the very same spirit as we did the Holy Diver album; Back in 1982 Ronnie, Vinny, Jimmy and I went into Sound City studios to kick around ideas and riffs, and about six weeks later we started laying down the tracks for what was to become the Holy Diver album.”

CD tracklisting:

“Devil In Me”
“Martyr”
“Starmaker”
“Burn This House Down”
“I Am Revolution”
“Blame It On Me”
“In Flames” (Bonus Track Deluxe Edition)
“Already Dead”
“Curse The Day”
“Orange Glow”
“Heavy Crown”
“The Sickness”

DVD tracklisting:

“Devil In Me” (video)
“Starmaker” (video)
Making of Heavy Crown

“Devil In Me” video:

(Photo: Ross Halfin)