Actually no, I've always preferred Ozzabbath to Diobath (well-crafted as their music was). Why? I find Ozzabbath has a higher pop content! I'm serious!! Ozzy sang these simple, catchy, somewhat childlike lullaby melodies over Iommi's and Butler's doomsday riffage and Ward's always swinging accompaniment. Dio's vocal melodies are much less immediate to me (his work with Elf being the exception, but there pianist Mickey Lee Soule had a great influence in creating Dio's lines).
There isn't a Sabbath song with Ozzy you can't hum after hearing it once. Most of Dio's melodies are inhummable. Ozzy is a great Beatles fan, you hear that.
Dio, great singer he was, can pull off charming naivety only rarely:
And here you hear Dio's Achilles Heel, his inability to sing a tough falsetto:
Blackmore called it disparagingly "
his little girlie voice when he went high". While he fell in love with Dio's voice initially, he realized after three Rainbow studio albums that he was also very limited in what he could do.
So no, I have an appreciation of Ronnie, but I've never been a die-hard fan, I'm a Bonnet disciple.
Forgive them, Rob, for looking a bit like your countrymen Rob & Ferdi (Bolland)! And it is kinda telling that people giving impressions of Dio abound while I have never heard anyone pull off a credible Bonnet, all the Rainbow singers after him agree that his stuff is near impossible to sing.
I mean this is a live bootleg, no touching up, look at what he does during the chorus at 01:16!