Drummer Vinny Appice Not Approached For Black Sabbath

Drummer Vinny Appice has a long history of playing with some of rock’s greatest bands and though he was part of the Heaven and Hell revival of the Ronnie James Dio era Black Sabbath, Appice says he was not contacted when Bill Ward fell out of the Black Sabbath reunion.

Speaking with The Rockpit, Appice says in a new interview that he wasn’t contacted despite his relationship with the band members. He explained, “I’m still in touch with Tony [Iommi] and Geezer [Butler], myself, but they never offered anything and I don’t ask. I don’t do that. They have my number and e-mail.”

He added, “It’s understandable [why they didn’t ask]. We did Heaven and Hell for three or four years with Ronnie and then Tony and Geezer are together, and Ozzy [Osbourne] comes in. He [wouldn’t have known] what band he was in. He [would have been] a little confused.”

After the dissolution of Heaven and Hell following Dio’s death, Appice landed on his feet with the new band Kill Devil Hill. The group is now promoting their latest record, ‘Revolution Rise,’ and the drummer says he’s thrilled with the results. “We’re all really pleased with it,” says Appice. “The whole band really feels there’s some great songs on there and no ‘fat’ at all. Each song has a different thing going on, each song has character and to top it off we had a great producer on there in Jeff Pilson helping us. It sounds sonically great.”

Appice was quick to not only mention Pilson’s influence, but also added that the new Kill Devil Hill was the first time bassist Rex Brown had been involved on their music from day one. The Pantera and Down bassist was a late addition to Kill Devil Hill while they worked on their debut disc. He concluded, “Since that first album, we’ve been out on the road a lot and we’ve become a pretty strong band. So this album has ideas from sound checks and from jams and both Mark [Zavon] and Rex came in with a couple of riffs. We all just put our two cents worth in and made it happen. So the writing was a little more focused.”