Overnight some new information about the Dio Years disc has come to light, so we'll get straight to it. The music site "Brave Words" has an article which has an interview with Tony Iommi by our old friend Martin Popoff. This is significant, because it names the three new tracks and gives a description of them. Here's the relevant text from the article:

• Shadow of the Wind: The slow one is quite a heavy track. It's called 'Shadow Of The Wind'. And Ronnie presented the first idea for that, and then I just came up with more stuff to go with it, and it's a really good track. Very similar to the old Sabbath style of writing. There's not loads of things on it. It's just really basic with the vocal. Probably about six minutes or something like that.
  
• The Devil Cries: And then we've got 'The Devil Cries', which is a mid-tempo one, which again is quite a powerful song. And I must say that Ronnie has done a fantastic job on the vocals on all of these. He really has, and the lyrical content and the actual melodies are very good. So that's the mid-tempo one. That's an interesting track.
  
• Ear in the Wall: And then we've got a fast one which is called 'Ear In The Wall', and that's a fast one (laughs).

That's some good stuff - none of that info was known to me before today, even in secret. The rest of the article goes on to talk about other issues, specifically Sharon Osbourne, tour date plans, etc. According to the article, there will be one US date around March, but the proper US tour won't start until August. You'll want to read this article.

The interview mentions that there are no keyboards on the new tracks. Assuming that is the case, then that would explain why we haven't heard whether there will be a keyboardist involved; either Geoff or Adam. The live dates I'm sure will need a keyboardist, but we probably won't hear about that until closer to when the dates are supposed to start.

There is a second interview up with Ronnie James Dio over at MTV.com. This article isn't as cool as Martin's article for Brave Worlds, as it doesn't have a lot of new info, but it is a nice summary of how the Heaven & Hell project came together (including the notion that the entire project was Rhino Records' original idea). You'll want to check that one out as well.

Speaking of Martin Popoff, you need to check out his Sabbath book which is out now and is a great read. It's called "Doom Let Loose: An Illustrated History", and can be ordered online now at Amazon.com. If you haven't looked into this title, you should.

Source:  black-sabbath.com