RITCHIE BLACKMORE'S RAINBOW

This debut album is oddly enough, having ''long time'' professional musician Ritchie Blackmore on board from Deep Purple fame, sounds pretty much like a ''real'' debut album, similar to those amateurish debuts, which includ simple blues/rock & roll songs, cover songs, and when I say amateurish, it means the style of the band is yet un-defined and inmature.

This having been released the same year as Come Taste the Band by Deep Purple with Tommy Bolin on guitar duties, this sounds pretty flat and primitive. It's not bad, it just seems that Ritchie went backwards in time, with just making some cool riffs, and that's it. Of course, there's the other highlight, that is Ronnie James Dio, a very well-known singer, with a incredible, and unique voice, which is the main reason this album can be differenciated from those from Deep Purple. Though, there's another notable difference between Deep Purple and Rainbow, in Deep Purple there's the essential role of Jon Lord's Hammond-Organ, while Rainbow focus' in Ritchie's guitar.

However the album for the music itself, isn't really something innovative, nor fresh, yet enjoyable. Some classics hard rock tunes like the famous opener, Man of the Silver Mountain, which is in my opinion, Rainbow's Smoke on the Water, then there's Snake Charmer, with Ritchie using wah-wah once again!, and then there's Sixteenth Century Greensleeves, which features Rainbow trademark sound, the sort-of menacing and medieval style and the story-telling vocals type, even though it's pretty simple compared to their later more progressive stuff, it pretty much resembles the basic characteristics of Dio-era-Rainbow. Then there's the cover songs, Still I'm Sad by the Yardbirds, a good hard-rockin' instrumental, the rythm is very much in the style of You Fool No One; then there's the Quatermass cover, Black Sheep of the Family, which is decent rock, which shows the amateur sound and un-defined sound. Then, besides the hard rock songs, there are other 2 highlights, Catch the Rainbow and Temple of the King, the later being a folkish tune, with some nice mellotron, while Catch the Rainbow is the other song on the album which features Rainbow future trademark style, with Dio's marvellous vocals, and again the mellotron, giving a very melancholic climax, which should be desired by a lot of bands.

To conclude it's a fine rock album, with a bit of all. The down-fall is the already mentioned un-defined sound, which half of the album could have been really by any other decent rock band. However it's my favorite album, mainly because of that reason: not having Rainbow's trademark sound fully develope, while obviously it's better objectively, I've never liked how it sounded, too medieval and dark.

3 stars. Good album, though if you're looking for something unique, check Rising.

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