Stranger in Us All

Rainbow has historically been one of the most influential bands in the realm of heavy metal, although like Black Sabbath they carried many remnants of the hard rock genre that metal essentially grew out of. This album functions mostly as a revisiting of that early style of metal, where the blues and jazz influences are highly blatant, and where there is a strong element of musical eclecticism that drives some of the material. One can notice that Ritchie Blackmore has been experimenting with acoustic guitars on both this album and the last Deep Purple album “The Battle Rages On”, which clues us in on how he has grown as a musician from his Smoke on the Water days.

“Stranger in Us All” has a strongly symmetrical structure in terms of song placement, exhibiting a sort of back and forth between innovative metal songs on the odd numbered tracks, and more traditional hard rock influences on the even numbered tracks. “Cold Hearted Woman” and “Too late for Tears” are highly blues driven and remind heavily of Deep Purple’s early material, where the music was distinct from that of other classic rock bands only in the virtuoso nature of the solos. “Stand and Fight” probably has the most minimalist set of riffs out of the bunch, and is the only song on here that probably is devoid of anything that resembles metal, though it does pass for an excellent rock song. “Silence” proves to contradict its own title with a rather prominent brass section, a set of blues inspired riffs, all on top of a quasi-big band inspired rhythm section.

Among the more metal tracks we have the guitar driven “Wolf to the Moon”, driven along by one of Ritchie’s signature speed riffs, and Doogie White’s Ronnie Dio inspired vocals. “Hunting Humans (Insatiable)” is a slow gloomy track that flirts with the early Sabbath Doom sound. By contrast, the remake of “Hall of the Mountain King” is up tempo, and the re-arrangement of the instrumentation is quite well done, not to mention the words utilized to bring out the grandeur of the character depicted in Grieg’s original composition.

However, the true gems on this album prove to shine quite a bit brighter than the solid songs mentioned previously. “Ariel” has a solid drum production, a rather haunting Eastern influenced riff that is somewhat reminiscent of “Gates of Babylon”, and some more top notch vocal work both by Doogie White and Candice Night. “Black Masquerade”, by Ritchie Blackmore’s own testimony, is essentially a variation on the original theme he composed for Deep Purple’s “Anya” off “The Battle Rages On”. It is loaded with technically intricate guitar and keyboard work, in addition to a brilliant classical guitar interlude reminiscent of the Spanish Flamenco style. We then close this album off with another cover version of Yardbirds classic “Still I’m Sad”, as sort of a final gesture to the original brilliance that was captured on Rainbow’s debut album back in 1975. It starts off with a brilliant clean electric guitar solo, followed by a rather somber yet up tempo body section. This song, more than the others, truly demonstrates Doogie White’s versatile vocal abilities, as well as how the dimensions of a song can be radically altered with some well placed keyboard and vocal effects.

In conclusion, this album underscores one of the primary differences between Deep Purple and Rainbow, unlike the former this project is completely Blackmore’s beast, and he has proven himself not to be the second rate guitarist who is saved by John Lord’s innovative soloing style that some quarters have pigeon holed him as. This album is mostly geared towards fan of Rainbow during the Ronnie Dio era, and has a highly classic rock feel to it at times that will probably sound old fashioned and passé to younger fans of metal who are looking for the technically driven speed sound of bands in the power metal genre. But regardless to one’s personal tastes, this album is fine for what it is, and that is a remembrance of the roots of where the music we love comes from.