Editing Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow (section)

==Reception==
{{Album ratings
|rev1 = [[AllMusic]]
|rev1score = {{Rating|2.5|5}}<ref name="allmusic">{{cite web | url = https://www.allmusic.com/album/ritchie-blackmores-rainbow-mw0000191535 | title = Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow review | access-date = 2013-11-24 | last = Kent-Abbott | first = David | publisher = [[AllMusic]]}}</ref>
|rev2 = ''[[Martin Popoff|Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal]]''
|rev2Score = 6/10<ref name="martin" >{{cite book |last=Popoff |first=Martin |author-link=Martin Popoff |title=The Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal: Volume 1: The Seventies |publisher=[[Collector's Guide Publishing]] |location=Burlington, Ontario, Canada |date=October 2003 |pages=225–226 |isbn=978-1894959025}}</ref>
|rev3 = ''[[The Encyclopedia of Popular Music]]''
|rev3score = {{Rating|3|5}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Larkin|first=Colin|author-link=Colin Larkin (writer) |year=2011 |title=[[The Encyclopedia of Popular Music]]|publisher=[[Omnibus Press]] |page=3960|isbn=978-0-85712-595-8|edition=5th}}</ref>
|rev4 = ''[[The Rolling Stone Record Guide]]''
|rev4score = {{rating|2|5}}<ref>{{cite book |title=The Rolling Stone Record Guide |date=1979 |publisher=Random House |page=35}}</ref>
}}

The album was praised in British contemporary reviews for its fantasy/heroic-like lyrical content and the innovative rock style.<ref>{{cite magazine |title=Volcanic Blackmore |magazine=[[Sounds (magazine)|Sounds]] |date=16 August 1975 |last=Makowski |first=Pete |url=https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/ritchie-blackmores-rainbow-iritchie-blackmores-rainbowi-oyster-oya2001 |accessdate=2021-07-01|url-access=registration}}</ref> However, the reviewer for the American magazine ''[[Rolling Stone]]'' disparaged the album, describing Blackmore's playing "listless and bored in relation to past performances" and the band "a completely anonymous group."<ref>{{cite magazine | url = https://www.rollingstone.com/artists/rainbow/albums/album/163769/review/6067547/ritchie_blackmores_rainbow | title = Album Reviews: Rainbow – Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow | access-date = 2013-11-24 | last = Altman | first = Billy | date = 23 October 1975 | magazine = [[Rolling Stone]] | url-status = dead | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20071002034359/http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/rainbow/albums/album/163769/review/6067547/ritchie_blackmores_rainbow | archive-date = 2 October 2007}}</ref>

Modern reviews have a similar tenor. [[AllMusic]] reviewer wrote that the album has "a few listenable tracks", with young Dio "at his best when he fully gives in to his own and Blackmore's medieval fantasy leanings in hard-rocking tracks like 'Sixteenth Century Greensleeves' and 'Man on the Silver Mountain'", but remarked how the band became "a true embarrassment when they try to lighten up and boogie down."<ref name="allmusic"/> Canadian journalist [[Martin Popoff]] noticed that on this album Blackmore "confirms the creative vacuum that was much in evidence towards his last years with Purple", offering a "boring, dated, diluted and largely illogical smorgasbord of guitar rock stylings, all inexpressively played over". He also criticized [[Martin Birch]]'s dull and inexpensive production, "which ruins what is already a limp noodle of a record" and saved only by the songs 'Man on the Silver Mountain' and 'Sixteenth Century Greensleeves', "which approach the worthiness of ''[[Rising (Rainbow album)|Rising]]''".<ref name="martin"/>