RAINBOW
"Stranger in us All"
KKKK (out of five - ed)
TMIB is back. "SIUA" finds Ritchie Blackmore at his brilliant best.
Rumor is, ex-vocalist Joe Lynn Turner declined the opportunity to join
Rainbow '95 having had a brief stint with his old boss in Deep Purple
after Rainbow split in 1984. Enter former Midnight Blue frontman
Doogie White .
Doogie fires a stirring shot across the bows on opener "Wolf To The Moon". Then in harness with Ritchie and his new cohorts (Greg Smith (b), Paul Morris (kb), and the since departed John O' Reilly (d)), he turns the heat on with the awesome "Cold Hearted Woman". "Hunting Humans(Insatiable)" is an AOR (euuuch - ed) classic, and there's also a classic for hardcore Blackmore fans - a revamped cover of "Still I'm Sad".
If there are any criticisms to be made, then " Hall of the Mountain King" is dramatic nonsense, whilst "Too Late For Tears" rips off the riff to "Can't happen here" (Gosh - that's a surprise - ed)! This is the kind of album from which Kerrang was born. The kind of record Rock fans would que up on a Monday morning for. So what happened?
Dave Hodgkinson 17 August 1995.