Heaven and Hell

All tracks by Dio, Iommi, Butler, Ward.

There are music videos for "Neon Knights" and "Die Young". However, they're just staged live footage with overdubbed music; they're not conceptual.

The cover art is actually a painting done by artist Lynn Curlee called Smoking Angels, and was not specifically commissioned for the Heaven and Hell album.

The album was long believed to have been released on April 25. However, an magazine ad from April 1980 confirms that the release date was indeed April 18.

The bass line for "Heaven and Hell" was written by Geoff Nicholls.

Geoff Nicholls was originally brought in to replace Geezer Butler, but moved to keyboards when Geezer returned to the band before the album was recorded.

There's another rumour that the bass on this album was actually played by Craig Gruber, and not Geezer, but this is largely unfounded. Craig was briefly tried out for bass during the period that Geezer quit, but did not formally join.

All the songs were written before Geezer returned - the only song that Geezer actually had a hand in writing was "Neon Knights", which was the final song recorded.

In January and March 2021, Gary Rees, stepson of keyboardist Geoff Nicholls, uploaded 2 songs to his (now deleted) YouTube channel, which are recordings from 1979 made during pre-production of the album that he found on some of Geoff's tapes. Nicholls.
The first is a demo version of "Heaven and Hell" with Geoff Nicholls on bass, and an unreleased song called "Slapback", which, due to the similarity of several riffs and verses, could have been converted into "Walk Away". This last song, it is not certain who played the bass. Geezer Butler claims he recorded it himself, while Tony Iommi claims it was Ronnie James Dio.

Recording information:

Recorded at Criteria Recording Studios, Miami, Florida, United States.
Additional recording at Studio Ferber, Paris, France.

Identifiers:

Barcode: 0 7599-23372-1
Matrix / Runout (Side A): BSK-1-3372-WW2 # 2
Matrix / Runout (Side B): BSK-2-3372-JW3