Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow (1975)

A lot has been written about Ritchie Blackmore's departure from Deep Purple and the formation of his own project, Rainbow. That he de facto took over the band Elf, which was supporting Deep Purple while touring around that time and had a certain Ronnie James Dio on vocals... So I spare ourselves a more extensive recap. Instead, onwards to the meat and potatoes!

The album begins with Man on the Silver Mountain, which, surely not coincidentally, has some similarities to that one Deep Purple song everyone knows. Just like Smoke on the Water the main riff is played in fourths (quite a trademark of Blackmore and found in a lot of his songs throughout his career) and the song grooves confidently along in the mid-tempo range. Quite radio-friendly actually. But as similar the songs are, Ronnie James Dio's vocal performance adds a more dramatic and operatic vibe to it, than Ian Gillan does. Where Smoke on the Water muses on the very worldly events during the recording of Deep Purple's album Machine Head and even includes their exact location in its lyrics ("We all came out to Montreux..."), Man on the Silver Mountain is more cryptic and evokes mystic imagery and is located very much in fantasy-land. Or Middle Earth.

While there are some more typical rock'n'roll songs as well, namely Black Sheep of the Family and If you don't like Rock and Roll, they appear really as the weaker moments of the album. I often get the impression Blackmore isn't that comfortable playing blues or blues-based material and these songs are showcasing this pretty well. While they are technically flawlessly played, they sound maybe a bit too clinical for their own good. Maybe the band tried to emulate Led Zeppelin here. Not a bad attempt, but they just lack their swagger. And Zeppelin was all swagger really.
(I think Blackmore actually wanted Rainbow to be a mix between Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, so there you go: Deep Zeppelin or Led Purple, take your pick.)

Luckily for the remainder of the album the band is very much speaking its own language and tries not to sound like anyone else. And to the benefit of the songs: the ballads don't try to be folky or something like that, as Zeppelin did before. Instead they take their inspiration from classical music and medieval tunes. After all, Blackmore is more a Bach- and Beethoven guy. Its quite funny to listen to songs like Temple of the King or Catch the Rainbow, realizing that twenty years before forming Blackmore's Night, he pretty much made already the same music!

Where the album really shines however, is in the hard and heavy end of the spectrum. Namely songs like Sixteenth Century Greensleeves and Snake Charmer. Here the epic fantasy can run freely: liberated from the limitations of 12-bar blues and straight into proto power-metal territory with Dio's heroic voice, heavy drumming, fast arpeggios and punchy riffs. Great songs which heritage can still be heard in today's metal.

As it is typical for a rock band of the 70's, especially with such strong lead personalities as Blackmore and Dio are, the rhythm-section - Craig Gruber on bass and Gary Driscoll on drums - stays consistently in the background. They certainly do a good job and give the songs a very naturally flowing feel while at the same time very competently delivering heaviness, but you can sense they are not the most important members of this band. Same applies to Mickey Lee Soule on the keys. At least he gets a bit of spotlight with his rock'n'roll piano in Black Sheep of the Family. But for vastly the largest part this album is very much a guitar-plus-singer album.

All in all, Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow is a bit of a mixed bag. It certainly has great moments and historic significance. The two main protagonists Blackmore and Dio can really shine and show off their talents. On the other hand, it feels like the band hasn't fully explored their possibilities yet. Something that would change with their follow-up album Rising.
And yes, the cover is ghastly. As influential their music was, their choice of artwork sadly was so too.

Burzum - Filosoferm (1996)

Ok, this is a tricky one for me - probably for obvious reasons if you know the history of the artist behind it. I will explore this a bit further in a minute. First, I want to take a look at what compelled me to eventually write this review: the music.

When I discovered this album (and Black Metal in general) in the early 2000s, stuff like Rammstein, Marilyn Manson and some other goth metal bands were probably the hardest and darkest music I was aware of (it was a more innocent age, you know) and hearing stuff like this for the first time was in a way repelling, I admit. Yet... fascinating.

Especially so Filosoferm. The harshness of the sound, the unconventional, hypnotically repetitiveness of the tracks - for me there wasn't anything like that really. Metal is usually a relatively conventional genre and hearing it stripped down to its bare bones, then slowed down and combined with ambient-elements you would usually expect in much kinder works, was quite an eye-opening experience to me. The album simply worked. Even if it combined on first glance quite contradictory extremes.

And these extremes could hardly be starker. It starts with the song "Dunkelheit" (=Darkness). With guitars drenched in snow-storm like white noise, distorted vocals about darkness and death and monotonous drums working steadily through the songs, while on the other end of the spectrum there is a track like the 25 minute long "Circumambulation of the Transcendental Columns of Singularity" (I spare you the german version of its name), which consists basically of an almost shy, minimalistic electronic beat and some ambient sounds; giving it a dreamlike quality. Really impressive how so much atmosphere is created by so little and how well these two extremes blend.

Groundbreaking albums often start to sound dated with time. The novelty they introduce gets picked up by others, developed and refined further, making the initial innovation appear... unfinished or even obsolete. But not in this case: Filosoferm hasn't lost anything of its impact. It sounds truly timeless; maybe because it defied following any trend or convention, but rather a concept.

As much I like this album though, as much I am repelled by its creator and his sick, neo-nazi ideology and this is the very core of the contradicting feelings I had towards this album for a long time (years in fact), and the very reason why I barely listened to it until recently.

Eventually, I made my peace with it and began to separate it mentally from its artist. For a good part because it is about emotion and conveying moods and not about propagating ideology.
Also, to me, the artists aren't as important as the art they create. Humans can be quite mundane and petty, whether they get idolised or not. Yet, with all their human flaws, they at the same time can create incredibly impactful pieces of art. And maybe they do it because they are tortured souls in one way or another, not in spite of. Just think of people like Franciso Goya, Richard Wagner or Francis Bacon. The people are long gone, but their creations will last.

In the end I wonder how much of the events back then in 1990s Norway, with all the church-burning and murders, were just some teenagers trying to one-up each other, until things got violently out of control by someone like Vickerness, who probably had (and may still have) mental issues and lost himself in the visions of destruction and death he helped create.

I also sense some genuine ambivalence within the whole Black Metal aesthetics. No doubt the music is a genuine expression of anger, fear and frustration. That's exactly what makes it so strong. The stark black-and-white aesthetics of the album covers (sadly not on Filosoferm) also has undeniable power. At the same time, corpsepaint, spikes, medieval weapons and all these accessories, are in my eyes quite juvenile ways of dressing up to appear "evil", which can devalue the earnest of what they actually want to say and therefore not the best call aesthetically.
The same applies for the choice of names from Tolkien's Ork-language (like Burzum). Sure, in the 90's Tolkien was less present in the mainstream as it is since the Peter-Jackson-films, yet again - the whole idea just doesn't fits quite right. It's actually quite kitschy. And probably was already back in the 90's.

Recent artists though seem to have found a more suitable stylistic approach. A great example is Myrkur, who uses pagan- and nature-inspired imagery so coherently and with such impact, without overdoing it and making it a "show". Musically though, I don't think artists like this would do the music they are doing without albums like Filosoferm. Like other milestones in music, it opened the door into a strange, new world for others to explore.