"Rising" by Rainbow 🌈​ released 17.05.1976

I was so excited to listen to this album! The singer of Rainbow (great name btw) is Ronnie James Dio, who's also the front man of Dio (who could have guessed), one of my very favorite heavy metal bands! On top of that, this album regularly makes it into "greatest heavy metal albums of all time" lists, so I was very curious. I hadn't listened to Rainbow before this album, but I was expecting the music to be somewhat close to what I love in Dio, and indeed it was!

This is a pretty short album, barely over half an hour and only 6 songs, but that was enough to win me over! The music is what I would describe as the more approachable side of heavy metal, a kind of early power metal that has some pop elements (a lot of synthesizers) while still maintaining a good kick to it.

The themes are starting to show Dio's affinity for fantasy: he mostly talks about werewolves, tarot cards and wizards. The songs Starstruck (about a stalkerish fan) and Do You Close Your Eyes are the only songs with more down to earth lyrics. I personally really love Dio's songwriting, he has a good balance of poetry and story telling.
Stargazer is an amazing, 8 minutes long epic, telling the story of slaves building a tower for a wizard to fly from, only to realize he's simply a man when he crashes down on the floor. The following song, A Light In The Black, deals with the feelings of deceit and loss that the slaves felt when their god turned out to be false. With those two songs, we have half of the album being dedicated to a fantasy tale with very powerful imagery.

This is Rainbow's second album, and I actually have their first and third ones on tape, so I should give them a try because this was so good, I'm sure I'll also enjoy their other albums!

#RainbowRising #Dio #ikolDiscoversMetal