STRAIGHT BETWEEN THE EYES

Rainbow second album from the '80's named Straight between the eyes from 1982 is a straight hard rock album to my ears. Even the prog leanings from Rising and Long live r'n'r are gone, leaving place to a more mainstream aproach and less chalenging music, but overall not bad. It's obvious why Rainbow did optain for such short pieces, hard rock numbers, it's because the hard and heavy style was moving up in that time, conquoring more and more fans and places around the world. Bands like Iron Maiden, Saxon, Whitesnake, Scorpions, and many more were at the truth moment in early '80's, so why not Rainbow change their music from elaborate hard rock with prog leanings in one straight and catchy. So the album is not bad at all, really , some fine moments can be extract from here like:Stone Cold and the ending piece Eye of fire (remembering of good old Rainbow from Rising era) are the best from here, the rest are also good but not excellent. The musicianship is good aswell , nothing to complain really, Turner's voice is a great one, but for hard rock music not for prog orientation. Rosenthal from keys is the replace of Don Airey and the rest are the same like on previous album. The music is good , but not exciting, for fans of hard and heavy, with mentioning maybe worth some spins to prog listners, but I doubt it will enjoy it very much. To me 3 stars, a good one but not very intristing either, kinda far from the shining moments of Rising (the peak of their career).