Holy Diver (song)
Holy Diver is the theme song of the album Holy Diver by the heavy metal band Dio and was released as their first single . Text and music are by Ronnie James Dio .
The song appeared in 1983 on the album of the same name Holy Diver . The single reached number 40 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Chart and number 72 on the UK Singles Chart. In 2009 VH1 ranked the piece at number 43 in the Top 100 Hard Rock Songs . The single was released in the summer of 1983 on Vertigo Records , on the B-side were Evil Eyes (later included on the album The Last in Line ) and Don't Talk to Strangers , another track from the album Holy Diver .
backgrounds
Eduardo Rivadavia from Allmusic characterized the song in a review of the album as timelessly epic and underlaid by a dark groove and compared it to Stargazer from Rainbow and Sign of the Southern Cross from Black Sabbath .
The music video for Holy Diver was produced by Arthur Ellis. It shows Ronnie James Dio as a fur-clad warrior who wanders through a desolate land. In a crumbling church he meets two warriors whom he turns into rats with his sword. He receives a new sword from a blacksmith. Swinging this sword, he walks through a building. Some hearers associate the text with Revelation 12 : 9; Dio himself said that everyone had their own interpretation, but that he had not written about this passage.
The Japanese video game company Irem released a game called Holy Diver for the Famicom console in 1989 , which is based on the song. The protagonist shows strong similarities with Ronnie James Dio. The American media group Clear Channel Communications put the song after September 11, 2001 on a list of a total of 166 pieces of music with an offensive title or questionable content, which should no longer be played by the connected radio stations.
Further use
- Soundtrack of the radio station V-Rock in the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories
- Guitar Hero: Rocks the 80s soundtrack
- South Park episode Hooked on Monkey Fonics ; there Dio has a guest appearance and plays Holy Diver .
- The baseball poker players Pat Burrell ( Tampa Bay Rays ) used the song in the years 2005, 2006 and 2009 as his beat music.
Cover versions
Artists who have covered Holy Diver :
- Pat Boone on the album In a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy , with Ronnie James Dio as background singer
- Killswitch Engage , first on the High Voltage sampler ! A Brief History of Rock for Kerrang! , later on As Daylight Dies
- Otyg performing live
- Eläkeläiset as Humpparaakki on Humppamaratooni
- Sum 41 as an acoustic version for the MTV telecast Jammed
- Tenacious D performing live
- HolyHell when performing live
- Holy Mother on Criminal Afterlife
- Axel Rudi Pell on "The Ballads IV"
- Steve 'n' Seagull's album "Farm machine"
- After All on the album "Cult of Sin"
- Pain of Salvation on the acoustic album "Falling Home"
- Burning Witches on the album "Hexenhammer"
Individual evidence
- ↑ AllMusic Billboard singles. Allmusic , accessed November 20, 2009 .
- ^ Neil Warwick, John Kutner, Tony Brown (eds.): The complete book of the British charts: singles & albums . Omnibus Press, 2004, p. 325 .
- ↑ Vh1 Top 100 Hard Rock Songs. spreadit.org, accessed November 20, 2009 .
- ↑ Eduardo Rivadavia: Holy Diver Review. Allmusic , accessed December 18, 2009 .
- ↑ Retroview: Dio - Holy Diver. The Metal Inquisition, July 9, 2008, archived from the original on February 9, 2010 ; accessed on February 16, 2016 .
- Jump up ↑ Roger Lotring: Full Metal Jackie Certified: The 50 Most Influential Metal Songs of the '80s and the True Stories Behind Their Lyrics . Course Technology, Boston, MA 2010, ISBN 978-1-4354-5441-5 , pp. 71 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- ↑ Philippe Perebinossoff, Brian Gross et al .: Programming for TV, radio, and the Internet: strategy, development, and evaluation . Elsevier, 2005, p. 190 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).