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Dios Forced To Change Name

added 27 July 2004 at 13.48

Californian psychedelic rockers Dios have been forced to change their name by a classic rock legend who believes that the similarity would cause confusion among audiences.

Apparently four long haired stoners from California could easily be mistaken for an aging five-piece playing 80s metal that wouldn’t sound out of place on the Spinal Tap soundtrack. Well in the opinion of the one-time Black Sabbath singer and general all round dark lord of rock, Ronnie James Dio, this may just be true.

Dio recently slapped Dios with a cease-and-desist order forcing the band to change their name to Dios Malos. "It's pretty retarded," Dios' bassist J.P. Cabellaro commented to Rolling Stone. "It seemed like a joke at first."

However ardent fans of the metal titans seem convinced that the well-meaning Californians picked their name in honour of their metal hero. Caballero hastily disagrees…

"When we named our band we were thinking of God," he says. "[Dios] is 'God' in Spanish. That's what it means to hundreds of millions of people all over the world. It didn't really seem like there was going to be any point of confusion. We're up against rainbows and magic.

"We're going to continue touring for our record," says Cabellaro. "It's not like this has happened and now we're going to start eating healthy and taking vitamins. It's the same as it was before except for now we're going to be Dios Malos."

The new album by Dios (or Dios Malos...) is released this week. To read Xfm’s review click here.

To discuss this story on the Xfm News Messageboard click here.

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Jon Ford

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