Last in Line – the band made up of original Dio members Vivian Campbell, Vinny Appice, Claude Schnell and Jimmy Bain – have signed a deal for an all-new album, due next year.
The lineup is completed by frontman Andrew Freeman, who’s been with them since they started the project in 2012 and previously worked with Lynch Mob, the Offspring and Hurricane. Earlier this year they released a sneak preview of their track Devil In Me.
Now they’ve confirmed their album will appear via Frontiers Records early in 2015. Guitarist Campbell, now with Def Leppard, recently admitted the band had never planned to write together. He told TicketsThere: “It just seemed the next logical step after we’d done some shows. It seemed right to try to create a sound that’s ours, not just trying to recreate the Dio sound.”
He argued that the absence of late leader Dio meant there was already a significant change, saying: “It’s obviously always going to sound a bit like Dio – we’re playing those songs that we wrote and recorded.
“The difference is that Andy doesn’t sound anything like Ronnie. That’s what motivated me; if he’d come in being a Ronnie clone, I’d have been very disinclined to go any further with it. I don’t want it to just be a tribute to Ronnie’s voice.”
Campbell is currently out of action while he undergoes cancer treatment.