threespires
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I like the vast majority of genres of music, there at least a few bands or artists I listen to regularly in almost all of them. Except metal.
Broadly speaking, metal has never really done it for me. Which perversely makes it all the more interesting in some ways because I want to understand why I don’t get something that so many people love. It’s one of the more studied genres and outside looking in its really fascinating. Did you know that there’s analogy between bi-polar disorder and love of metal and that in the vast majority of cases its’ beneficial to the listener; also metal fans are some of the most well adjusted people in their 30s and 40s; but then again mice exposed to metal experience no therapeutic effects and it is an incredible stressor for them at a level completely different from pretty much any other forms of music they are exposed to.
Anyway, enough waffle, what do I think about Rainbow Rising? Of it’s type it’s a great album helped by the fact that it’s not heavy metal in extremis.
Ritchie Blackmore knows what he’s doing and then some and Cozy Powell is hugely enjoyable. The rest of the band are decent too.
For such a little man Dio has a great set of pipes. However, the style of lyric and singing in the genre as a whole isn’t orientated to light and shade or nuance and he’s not looking to buck that trend, so as talented as he is I find it a bit one dimensional. It occurred to me when listening to the first verse of Do You Close Your Eyes, I wonder how Morrissey would deliver that lyric? In comparison to Dio, clearly quite differently but I think he would have invested more meaning into one of the few lyrics that make conventional sense.
Once upon a time when I thought I was a bit more sophisticated than I am and before I realised I was a KFA, I used to be quite sniffy and patronising about metal lyrics and particularly the type on this album. Over the years I’ve come to realise that just because it’s not the way I would choose to express myself or an idiom of interest to me doesn’t mean they are not valid, and that they do fit very well with the nature of the music. So once upon a time I would have hated Stargazer off the back of the lyric whereas now I can let that slightly float over me and just appreciate the overall effect which is definitely powerful. At the risk of contradicting myself, it is to Dio’s credit that he sells songs where there isn’t necessarily a lot of meaning to the words.
I don’t think there’s anything on here that I intensely dislike, if I was picking favourites personally I‘d probably go for Run With The Wolf and A Light in The Black.
My single biggest issue with the album is similar to Rob’s, I suspect that the average Rainbow fan would rate Down to Earth or Difficult to Cure much lower than Rising but for me I will trade the archetypal epic songs delivered in his epic way by Dio during his tenure, for the more hooky and commercial sound certainly on Down to Earth and probably on the subsequent one too. Some of this album interspersed with tracks from Long Live Rock n Roll onwards and maybe Catch the Rainbow from the first album (to remind me that it wasn’t all Dio at 11) works for me. I can appreciate Rainbow as I do Deep Purple but I’m very much in the greatest hits space.
I’ve approached listening to this album a bit like dissecting a rat. It’s fascinating but it’s not how I would normally spend my leisure time given the choice. The score this gets depends on whether I score with my head or my heart, if I’m scoring with my heart and the connection it does or doesn’t make it would be struggling to get a 5; but to do that would be insulting to the musicianship on display and so I’m voting with my head recognising the many qualities on show and it’s getting 7/10 which still feels a bit churlish but is as far as I’m prepared to go.
Broadly speaking, metal has never really done it for me. Which perversely makes it all the more interesting in some ways because I want to understand why I don’t get something that so many people love. It’s one of the more studied genres and outside looking in its really fascinating. Did you know that there’s analogy between bi-polar disorder and love of metal and that in the vast majority of cases its’ beneficial to the listener; also metal fans are some of the most well adjusted people in their 30s and 40s; but then again mice exposed to metal experience no therapeutic effects and it is an incredible stressor for them at a level completely different from pretty much any other forms of music they are exposed to.
Anyway, enough waffle, what do I think about Rainbow Rising? Of it’s type it’s a great album helped by the fact that it’s not heavy metal in extremis.
Ritchie Blackmore knows what he’s doing and then some and Cozy Powell is hugely enjoyable. The rest of the band are decent too.
For such a little man Dio has a great set of pipes. However, the style of lyric and singing in the genre as a whole isn’t orientated to light and shade or nuance and he’s not looking to buck that trend, so as talented as he is I find it a bit one dimensional. It occurred to me when listening to the first verse of Do You Close Your Eyes, I wonder how Morrissey would deliver that lyric? In comparison to Dio, clearly quite differently but I think he would have invested more meaning into one of the few lyrics that make conventional sense.
Once upon a time when I thought I was a bit more sophisticated than I am and before I realised I was a KFA, I used to be quite sniffy and patronising about metal lyrics and particularly the type on this album. Over the years I’ve come to realise that just because it’s not the way I would choose to express myself or an idiom of interest to me doesn’t mean they are not valid, and that they do fit very well with the nature of the music. So once upon a time I would have hated Stargazer off the back of the lyric whereas now I can let that slightly float over me and just appreciate the overall effect which is definitely powerful. At the risk of contradicting myself, it is to Dio’s credit that he sells songs where there isn’t necessarily a lot of meaning to the words.
I don’t think there’s anything on here that I intensely dislike, if I was picking favourites personally I‘d probably go for Run With The Wolf and A Light in The Black.
My single biggest issue with the album is similar to Rob’s, I suspect that the average Rainbow fan would rate Down to Earth or Difficult to Cure much lower than Rising but for me I will trade the archetypal epic songs delivered in his epic way by Dio during his tenure, for the more hooky and commercial sound certainly on Down to Earth and probably on the subsequent one too. Some of this album interspersed with tracks from Long Live Rock n Roll onwards and maybe Catch the Rainbow from the first album (to remind me that it wasn’t all Dio at 11) works for me. I can appreciate Rainbow as I do Deep Purple but I’m very much in the greatest hits space.
I’ve approached listening to this album a bit like dissecting a rat. It’s fascinating but it’s not how I would normally spend my leisure time given the choice. The score this gets depends on whether I score with my head or my heart, if I’m scoring with my heart and the connection it does or doesn’t make it would be struggling to get a 5; but to do that would be insulting to the musicianship on display and so I’m voting with my head recognising the many qualities on show and it’s getting 7/10 which still feels a bit churlish but is as far as I’m prepared to go.
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