For many wasted years (and many more dark, lightning strewn nights) in my hurricane years, I was convinced that Dio-the-band’s 1983 debut, “Holy Diver”, was the greatest rock n’ roll record ever concocted. In fact, it still MIGHT be, I just kinda painted myself into this hipster-sleaze persona, so I gotta give the nod to GNR, lest I suffer the wrath of full grown men that wear mascara and ripped fishnets. And believe me, that’s some fuckin’ wrath. Anyway, “Master of the Moon” is no “Holy Diver”, so don’t worry, razor boy, but it’s still D-I-fuckin’-O, and even if it’s about Ronnie James’s astral journey to the Big Green Cheese – and I fear that it may be- it’s a righteous howl of retro-biker doom rawk n’ roll, so let’s dance.

Opener “One More For the Road” is a classic, hard-driving dragon-boogie tune, reminiscent of RJD’s own 80’s throttle rocker “Speed at Night” (or, hell, even “High Speed on Ice”), and although he hobbles the tempo right after, it’s a rush of pure old-skull flash metal adrenaline. Hell yes.

Um, ok, so the next 5 songs sorta plod along, in a neo-doom style, sorta like Dio in his Sab daze, only without Iommi’s considerable firepower. This suite of songs might be about Dio’s long hard road to the moon, and as we all know, it can get pretty slow out their on the road for long stretches, so let’s give the cat some room. They are a bit of a slog, these songs, but at least RJ’s voice sounds strong and noble, like it ought to.

Things pick up again at track 7, with the epic “Living the Life”, a total heads-down, take-no-prisoners chugfest that sounds like “Restless and Wild” era Accept. “I Am” has a nasty acid-metal solo and some truly demented mock-opera crooning from RJ, “Death By Love” is total claws-out flash metal, the kind of song you might’ve heard cranking out of every primer-slathered Camaro in town in 1986, and closer “In Dreams” is as close to a stoner-doom retro-rawk blow-out as Dio is gonna get in this century. “MOTM” does drag a bit in it’s slower moments, but the rockers are as horn-throwing and headbanging as anything Dio has ever done.