"Rainbow Rising"vs"Heaven and hell"vs"Holy diver"

[Hellraiser!!]

All those 3 albums are fantastic....but Heaven and Hell wins, followed by Rainbow Rising, then Holy Diver!!!

Neon Knights, Heaven and Hell, CHildren of the sea, Die Young, Lady Evil, Lonely is the word...damn, this disc is perfect!!

[WACF]

Cool old thread.

I would have to go with Heaven and Hell...with Rainbow Rising very close(should be required listening for any 70's hard rock fan)...then Holy Diver.

Stargazer...one of my all time favorite songs...ever...

Since Graham Bonnet was mentioned...I don't mind hearing his stuff with Rainbow on radio but Hiroshima mon amour pretty much destroyed my liking of anything Bonnet...I fucking hate that song...the only decent thing on it is Yngwie.

[Coyote]

I'll go with "Rising".

[Terry]

Hell, the only decent thing about Bonnet was the guitarists he hooked up with...

As for the Ozzy live concert footage that came out and was played on MTV around the time of the Speak Of The Devil tour, Ozzy overdubbed vocals on top of the original live tracks on that, as well.

[bueno bob]

Hell, the only decent thing about Bonnet was the guitarists he hooked up with...

THANK YOU.

I get so fucking irked at people who think Graham Bonnet is some kind of fucking legend...the asshole sounds more constipated than Hagar when he's trying to hit high notes that he's obviously not suited for; metal isn't even his style of music, for shit's sake, and he's been swinging from the nutsack of ONE Rainbow album ever since 1979.

He's obviously impossible to work with, too...Blackmore? One album. Schenker? One album. Malmsteen? One album. Vai? One album. You could put a loaded gun to his temple and he STILL couldn't keep a lineup together.

And NOW his latest trick is to take his solo band of nobodys and call them "Alcatrazz"? Fucking PUH-LEASE. I hope Waldo, Uvena, and Shea manage to sue the fucking SHIT out of him and put him into the poorhouse, he absolutely fucking deserves it. Only thing worthwhile about Alcatrazz was introducing Malmsteen to the masses, anyway...Christ...

And yet there are Rainbow fans out there that consider him "legendary" in the music industry.

FOR WHAT? Since You've Been Gone and All Night Long? What solo work has he done that has left ANY impact whatsoever beyond the influence his guitarist made at the time?

Nothing.

[GAR]

I'll go with "Rising".

Now this is one of the most perfect , classic heavy metal albums of all time.

Lyrically, songlisting, artwork.. one of the most cohesive vinyls ever made, it holds its ground against almost any other album made by a major label, the production is impeccable.

I can find lots of fault with Sabbath, mainly because they were considered a novelty act, so granted, they didn't get the necessary developmental time needed in the studio the way Ritchie could just demand X number days.

It's the kind of recording you listen to 100 times after you "discover" it and get into, afterwhich you find all kinds of different things going on in the music. The synthesizers, of all those classic analogue tones there's not one cheesy keyboard in there, and none of them clash with Ritchie's considerably clean-by-todays' standards guitar tone.. the drummer was the best rock drummer ever born practically.

The "less is more" adage comes into play here with this one, there's spatialization, there's room effect, a symphony orchestra going on long before the Bach-Rock fad came and went. Except Blackmore gets it right, not sloppy, not overboard, and doesn't overplay against it.

GRATE album, a masterpiece. It was like Ritchie's "Women and Children First" in many ways!

[Mr. Vengeance]

Heaven and Hell, without a doubt. It's hard to find many metal albums to compare to it. In a class with only a handful of others.

[Panamark]

Holy Diver.... Only because I didnt hear Heaven and Hell
for a few years after Holy Diver. HD was well entrenched in
my brain by that time. I also saw the Viv Campbell / DIO band live
performing it. My group of metalhead mates kinda defined Ozzy/Sabbath
as the only version of Sabbath out there, and DIO in his
own special class.. We liked both individually but all the
crossover stuff was ignored.

Which is cool as I got to hear some gems later on..
I thought Gillan/Sabbath was Ok too...

I must give Rainbow Rising another listen, as GAR said
"after you discover it" well, I've listened to it in the past,
think its good, but I dont feel any special discovery...
Time for another spin.... I seem to respect Ritchie Blackmore's
Rock work more and more as I get older for some bizzarre reason...

he can ram that minstrel jester band up his clacker though !

[binnie]

Three certifiable classics.

A tough call, but Rainbow Rising edges it. The energy on that album is staggering.

[Atomic_Rob]

Still hating the Dio

[FORD]

I don't compare the Ozzy & Dio years against each other. As far as I'm concerned, it was two different bands.

Just like Van HALEN and Van Hagar. Except Sabbath w/Dio weren't cheese ballad spewing pussies.

[bueno bob]

I don't compare the Ozzy & Dio years against each other. As far as I'm concerned, it was two different bands.

Just like Van HALEN and Van Hagar. Except Sabbath w/Dio weren't cheese ballad spewing pussies.

Tony Iommi could do an album of disco scratch and country ballads and it would still be heavier than 90% of anything else out there...

[katie]

Rising.

Awesome quad drum brakes from Cozy all the way through.

Great songs, great production, great mix.

Awesome hard rock album.

[scottd1984]

I don't compare the Ozzy & Dio years against each other. As far as I'm concerned, it was two different bands.

Just like Van HALEN and Van Hagar. Except Sabbath w/Dio weren't cheese ballad spewing pussies.

And Geezer owns Mikey !!! For that matter Ronnie's in a whole other class than Spammy

[scottd1984]

It's a tough call, but I'll take Heaven & Hell. But Rising is a good runner up Ronnie,Ritchie and Cozy were an unbeatable team together.