Holy Diver

At its surface, this song is about Satan, and his descent to Hell (his "dive"). But according to Dio, there's a lot more to it, and the main character isn't really The Devil. "The song 'Holy Diver' is really about a Christ-figure, who on another place, not Earth, has done exactly the same as we've apparently experienced or were supposed to have experienced on Earth: dying for the sins of man so that man can start again and be cleansed and do it properly," he told Sam Dunn for the film Metal: A Headbanger's Journey. "So, the same thing happened on this other far-distant planet, and all the people on this planet are calling him the Holy Diver because he's about to go to another world to do what he did to the first: absolve them from their sins by having himself killed. And the people are saying to him, 'Don't go,' with innuendos of tigers and stripes and hearts and being eaten. It was meant to show just how selfish humanity is, that this one form of humanity on this one world said, 'No, don't go down there and save anybody else. Stay here, we need you, you are ours.'"

Dio is Ronnie James Dio, the replacement vocalist for Ozzy Osbourne in Black Sabbath and the original lead singer in the band Rainbow. His solo career was far less successful than Ozzy's, and there was some animosity between the two, but when Dio died of cancer on May 16, 2010, Ozzy released a statement saying: "I was very saddened to hear of the passing of Ronnie James Dio. Metal has truly lost one of its greatest voices."

This song is an expression of Dio's rebellion against his Catholic upbringing, which he felt distorted the message of the religion. Instead of teaching by love, the nuns would keep order by smacking the kids with rulers and telling them they would go to Hell if they didn't behave.