It was intended to feature Cozy Powell, then Sabbath's drummer, but he was immobilised by a broken pelvic bone sustained in a horse riding accident.

Dio initially wanted to replace Powell with Simon Wright, from AC/DC and his own band, but Butler and Iommi rejected him.

They instead recruited Vinny Appice, who had served as Sabbath's drummer during most of Dio's previous tenure with the band, from 1980–1982.

During sessions for the album, Tony Martin made a short comeback when invited by the band to try the songs out.

"[15][16] Demo sessions with Powell yielded numerous recordings, including two unreleased songs – "The Night Life" (also called "Next Time"), whose riff was later used for "Psychophobia" on Cross Purposes, and "Bad Blood," which sounds very similar to "I" on Dehumanizer.

[17] "Master of Insanity" was also an unreleased Geezer Butler Band track, of which the Dehumanizer version is essentially a rerecording.

[19] The album's lead single, "TV Crimes," was a criticism of American televangelists, particularly Jeff Fenholt, who briefly worked with Iommi in the mid-1980s on what would become Seventh Star.

We recorded it true to what the band is: just guitar, bass, drums and vocals, y'know – a couple of keyboard things here and there.

"[20] Although the Sabbath lineup was the same as 1981's Mob Rules, the musical direction is very different, and a marked change from their previous material, particularly the preceding Tyr.

Much of the album anticipates the directions taken by Dio in his eponymous solo band's next two records, Strange Highways (1993) and Angry Machines (1996).

[25] For the two Costa Mesa shows, the band replaced Dio with Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford; on the second night, Iommi, Butler and original Sabbath drummer Bill Ward joined Osbourne onstage for four songs.

This version includes a bonus disc with alternate recordings of several songs ("Master of Insanity," "Letters from Earth" and "Time Machine," the latter of which is available on the US version of the album as a bonus track) and several other songs recorded on 25 July 1992 in Tampa, Florida.