RISING

Rainbow

Prog Related

4.21 | 618 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Prog Leviathan
Prog Reviewer

Outstanding and unique, Rising combines the vintage soul of metal with a forward thinking sound (for the time), charging at the listener with a mighty sword of classic hard-rock.

The album opens with some brief sci-fi synthisizer, opening up the throttle with the driving "Tarot Woman". The hard-rock feel of this song is excellent, and sets a powerful tone for the album. Blackmoor's guitar riffing is driving and heavy, with a thick bluesy feel and a sort of understated proficiency-- few solos but a great sound. The real highlight here, and in the strutting "Run to the Wolf" that follows, are Dio's vocals. I am rapidly being convinced that he is the one of the greatest hard-rock vocalists of this era, his masculine voice and powerful phrasing adding a tremendous amount of energy to these songs. I love a good metal wail, but Dio's gruff persona may actually be better. His vocals, and the band's style in "Starstruck", rival Zepplin on their best day.

The second side of Rising is where things get epic, and we can start to see how Rainbow's proto-power metal style influenced some of the heavy-metal giants following in their footsteps. "Stargazer" gives us a heavy, driving rock pulse with an ambitious mystic/egyptian-like feel. While overall a good and very powerful song, it lacks direction, loosing its focus in the chugging. However, the rip-roaring closer "A Light in the Black" ends Rising very well, with fat keyboard and guitar solos surrounded by classically inspired unison moments-- and did I mention Dio?

A rock solid album; the heavy/vintage sound is exceptional and the muscianship stands out even today, not to mention what is clearly one of the coolest album covers of all time!

Songwriting: 4 Instrumental Performances: 4 Lyrics/Vocals: 4 Style/Emotion/Replay: 5

Prog Leviathan | 4/5 | 2010-5-8

MEMBERS LOGIN ZONE

As a registered member (register here if not), you can post rating/reviews (& edit later), comments reviews and submit new albums.

You are not logged, please complete authentication before continuing (use forum credentials).

Share this RAINBOW review

Social review comments () BETA

Review related links

Send comments to Prog Leviathan
Report this review (#281034)
Buy RAINBOW music online with PA partners
Show all RAINBOW MP3/Stream
Go to RAINBOW page for videos, full discography with ratings, reviews and much more
Go to Rising page for more details, where to buy and ratings/reviews
Search the Forum for RAINBOW related discussions