Today's album
Rising
Rainbow
An enslaved population builds a tower for a wizard who promises he can fly. Somehow, that is only the second-most ridiculous thing about Rainbow.
02
What Shaped This Album
Ritchie Blackmore left Deep Purple, recorded Rainbow’s debut, then dismissed nearly everyone except singer Ronnie James Dio. He wanted hard rock heavier, faster, and more disciplined without sacrificing melody.
In 1976, metal had not settled into rules. Blackmore brought classical scales and ruthless riffs; Dio brought sorcery, kings, and people trapped beneath them. The album’s largest story follows workers who sacrifice years and bodies to build one ruler’s impossible monument. Fantasy makes tyranny ancient, theatrical, and recognizable.
03
The Album Title,Dissected
Rising
The cover supplies the missing subject: the rainbow is rising, but a giant fist has seized it on the way up. Promise and control occupy the same image.
The title also announces Blackmore’s second attempt at forming this band. After replacing most of the debut lineup, he was not preserving Rainbow. He was raising a harsher version from it. Six songs later, the name sounds less like weather than a force being summoned.
04
What to Listen For
The mechanical prophecy
“Tarot Woman” opens with a synthesizer sequence, then Blackmore enters as if guitars have come to overthrow it.
The restrained riff
“Starstruck” proves Blackmore can make a few blunt notes more addictive than a hundred-note run.
The tower rises
Cozy Powell’s drums and the Munich Philharmonic give “Stargazer” the scale of the labor its wizard consumes.
The solo above the wreckage
Blackmore uses an Eastern-tinged scale in “Stargazer,” making the guitar sound as foreign as the ruler’s dream.
05
Why It Matters Today
Fantasy is often dismissed as escape from politics. “Stargazer” uses distance to expose a familiar bargain: one charismatic leader promises transcendence, workers absorb the cost, and failure becomes their mass grave rather than his responsibility.
That story travels easily from kings to corporations, movements, and billionaire fantasies. The eight-minute scale is part of the warning. The project must feel magnificent or no one would agree to build it. Listen past the dragons-and-wizards reputation. Dio is singing from the ground, among the people ordered to make another man’s dream stand.