RITCHIE BLACKMORE'S RAINBOW

Ritchie Blackmore left Deep Purple and released his debut as "Ritchie's Blackmore Rainbow". In fact this album could be named as Ritchie Blackmore & The Elf, whenever Ritchie just took almost all US band for his new group.

I believe this album was one of last swan songs or hard rock "golden age". Deep Purple went down, and Blackmore bring big part of DP sound and atmosphere to his new band. I love Ronnie James Dio voice in all his projects, and this album is his real debut in big rock ( Elf popularity before Rainbow was very limited).

Music is very melodic and different, Blackmore plays his best guitar for years. Combination of Blackmore love to euro-classic and some British folk with Dio's world of dragons are very balanced there, but you can hear many elements of it in music. And in this album it still is more positive factor.

Ex-Elf musicians are almost all not of highest level, and it feels in some moments (technically), but the atmosphere is perfect. All songs are great, the only filler is "If You Don't Like Rock'n'Roll". Still sounding more as hard-rock album from early seventies, this work is very important (and is second best Rainbow studio album after next coming "Rising"). In later albums Blackmore will change musicians and will refresh the sound, but rare of them will have same atmosphere as this debut.

Not too much progressive, but hard rock classic album.