10 Perfect Hard Rock Albums Of The 1970s
9. Rising - Rainbow
In the early '70s, the idea of heavy metal was still just getting born. Though you had hard rock to make up for the actual rock and roll on the airwaves, there wasn't too many tricks up your sleeve unless you dove right back into the blues. There was another avenue though, and Ritchie Blackmore found it by getting medieval on Rainbow Rising.
Free from the grasp of Deep Purple, Rainbow's sophomore record with Ronnie James Dio on vocals was the first time we got to hear what power metal sounded like.
What...don't believe it?
Just listen to the topics of witches and dragons on here combined with these riffs and tell me that you can't hear the seeds of acts like Blind Guardian today. This was also the first time we saw more exotic scales being used, with Stargazer being one of the most intense pieces of music that Blackmore has even been involved with.
While it would be easy to just pin everything on this record down to just power metal, there's a lot more facets to this record. You could be thinking that you'd arrived in the Middle Ages on one track, only to have it snap on a dime and find yourself engrossed in some sort of unholy ritual of witchcraft. Either way, it's not like you'd want to leave any time soon.