HEAVEN & HELL guitarist Tony Iommi is featured in a new interview with Robert Gray at Ultimate-Guitar.com. An excerpt appears below:

Q: Did recording The Devil You Know feel any different than recording past BLACK SABBATH albums? Previous to The Devil You Know, the last Black Sabbath album was released in 1995 (Forbidden).

Iommi: "Recording The Devil You Know felt great, to be honest with you. There was no pressure, and we haven't allowed ourselves to get ourselves pressurised into doing anything. We've taken things at our own pace, I think. We decided to rehearse and write in Los Angeles at Ronnie's house, and do some of that at my house in England. We rehearsed and wrote for roughly six weeks, and then had a break in that six weeks so that we could tour for a month with JUDAS PRIEST as part of the Metal Masters tour in America. After that, we then went back into the rehearsal situation for an additional six weeks. We did things in those stages, which was good. We had no problem at all. Recording these tracks was really pleasurable, to be honest."

Q: The three tracks recorded for The Dio Years were really, really strong, with each track strong enough to have been issued as singles. Despite the strength of those tracks, the group didn't feel any pressure to deliver a really strong, solid album?

Iommi: "I hope The Devil You Know is a really strong, solid album (laughs). To be honest, we had plenty of material written this time, and we wrote loads that we didn't eventually use. It's always difficult to select which ideas to work on. Before getting together this time, we did a lot of pre-stuff - Geezer had a CD of riffs, and Ronnie had ideas too. We chose which ones to work on, and limited The Devil You Know to ten tracks. When we start working on one track, we always finish that track. There was always things we could've done for the album. We could've included another three tracks (laughs), but we stopped at ten."

Go to this location for the complete interview.