Here are all the news from October 1999 to January 2000 - some of these may be outdated already, so please check out the newest news for updates!
Magica is going to be released in the USA by Spitfire Records on March 7th or 21st, 2000! I'm not aware of the European release date yet, but I'd assume it is close to those dates also. At least in the USA Spitfire is going to re-release the two previous Dio albums at the same time with Magica, i.e. Angry Machines and Inferno: The Last In Live.
Magica is probably going to be released on February 8th, 2000 in the USA by Spitfire Records. There are some rumors about earlier release in the Europe, on December 31st, 1999, but that date hasn't been confirmed.
The recording of Dio's forthcoming album Magica should be almost ready now. The album will be released by Spitfire and has been recorded at Wyn Davis' Total Access Studio, the same place where Dio did recorded also Angry Machines and mixed the double live album Inferno: The Last In Live.
The album is based on a book of spells called Magica. The album will have thirteen tracks:
Holy Dio - A Tribute To The Voice Of Metal: Ronnie James Dio came out in Japan on October 21st. The Japanese version has one extra track, Gates Of Babylon by Naoto Shibata of Loudness.
Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Estonia will witness a huge tour in November when Dio, Manowar, Motörhead and Lion's Share will do a Monsters Of The Millenium tour here. The tour dates can be found here.
There is another Dio tribute album coming! The first Dio tribute album - titled Holy Dio - A Tribute To The Voice Of Metal: Ronnie James Dio - came out in the summer of 1999 in Europe. This second Dio tribute album is coming out on October 26th, 1999 in the USA and is titled Awaken The Demon: Tribute To Dio!
For more information about this tribute album, please click here!
On September 25th and 26th, Deep Purple held two concerts at Royal Albert Hall in London, UK. They were backed up by The London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Paul Mann. The concerts were charity shows in aid of Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy.
The shows featured also Ronnie James Dio, who sang two songs off Roger Glover's (Deep Purple's bassist) solo album The Butterfly Ball - Sitting In A Dream and Love Is All. At the end of the shows Ronnie also participated with Purple's classic Smoke On The Water.
Both of the shows were really great, a great mixture of classical and rock music. They'll be released on CD, video tape and DVD on January 18th, 2000!
The first Dio tribute album, Holy Dio - A Tribute To The Voice Of Metal: Ronnie James Dio, was released in Australia on September 20th, 1999! There are also rumors about possible US release of this album by Century Media/St. Clair.
Dio's forthcoming album, Magica, will be released in February 2000 (supposedly February 8th) by Spitfire Records. The lineup for the album will feature Ronnie on vocals, Craig Goldie on guitars, Jimmy Bain on bass, Simon Wright on drums and Scott Warren on keyboards.
After a short, roughly 25 year break, Ronnie's first big band Elf is going to reunite for an album. This project was started a couple of years ago already, when Ronnie and his cousin David "Rock" Feinstein started to wonder if they should put Elf together once more. David was the guitarist in Elf on the first Elf album and tour.
Elf will feature also their original keyboardist Mickey Lee Soule and Manowar's bassist Joey DeMaio. At the moment it is unknown who'll sit behind the drum kit.
No time schedule has been revealed yet, but it is pretty likely that this project won't happen before Dio's next album Magica is released and Dio has done a world tour to support the album. It is also unknown whether the band will do any touring or will it be just an album.
This page is maintained by Tapio Keihänen,
E-mail: dio@iki.fi.
URL: http://www.dio.net/news/2000_january.html,
the front page http://www.dio.net/.