Rising

Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow had been a landmark debut, but Rainbow really came into its own with its second album, Rainbow Rising. Only Blackmore and Ronnie James Dio remained from the original lineup; the rest of the band was replaced by Tony Carey, Jimmy Bain and Cozy Powell, veteran players who could provide the enormous force that Blackmore and Dio wanted. “Stargazer” and “A Light in the Black” are still high-water marks of epic heavy metal. The blitzkrieg assault of the latter song presages the entire New Wave of British Heavy Metal, while the former is a behemoth stomp that climaxes with the participation of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra. The remaining songs are less ambitious, but no less vicious. The grisly riffs “Tarot Woman,” “Run with the Wolf” and “Starstruck” are all electrified by the production of Martin Birch, who oversaw all of Deep Purple’s classic albums, and would go on to engineer all of Iron Maiden’s ‘80s work. The first Rainbow album was all about Blackmore’s vision, but here Dio takes center stage. A troll-like frontman with operatic pipes, he offered a whole new archetype of the rock god.