Rising
Rising rebuilds Rainbow with a new lineup and turns Ritchie Blackmore’s hard riffs and Ronnie James Dio’s fantasy-driven voice into a larger story.
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Track List
- Tarot Woman
- Run with the Wolf
- Starstruck
- Do You Close Your Eyes
- Stargazer
- A Light in the Black
Liner Notes
Rising is Rainbow's second album, on which Ritchie Blackmore and Ronnie James Dio built the prototype of stylized metal. After the debut, Blackmore renewed the entire lineup except Dio, bringing in the master drummer Cozy Powell, keyboardist Tony Carey and bassist Jimmy Bain. With only six songs, yet holding two epics exceeding eight minutes on side B, it is a dense record. It was recorded at Musicland Studios in Munich, produced by the master Martin Birch. Ken Kelly's cover painting, of a fist grasping a rainbow from a stormy sea, is also striking.
Grand songs like "Stargazer," "Tarot Woman" and "A Light in the Black" line up. "Stargazer" in particular is a monumental song in heavy metal history, and became the template for later symphonic metal and power metal. Dio's fantastical lyrics are tied to Blackmore's neoclassical guitar. An immortal classic, cited in many reviews as one of the finest metal albums of all time. In a Kerrang! magazine readers' poll, it was once voted the greatest heavy metal album of all time.