I see a rainbow in the sky

Scorpions - Fly to the Rainbow - 1974

After the band's first album, they happened to tour with UFO, who asked Michael Schenker if he wanted to join them. Schenker left, and the band actually came to an end, until Rudolf Schenker and Klaus Meine decided to join forces with 3/4 of a pretty unknown band called Dawn Road. And that's a very good thing.
I never really knew they had come so close from breaking up, and I don't know if they would have if they hadn't joined with the ex-Dawn Road guys. What is very clear is that the change did them a lot of good.
When writing about their debut album, I mentioned how "un-Scorpions" that album was. Now, this is still not quite what we would all call "classic" Scorpions. It has its moments of pretty straight forward hard rock, but there are a lot moments that sound a bit more proggy/psychedelic perhaps.
Some of it, I guess, has to do with the fact that from Dawn Road they got Uli Jon Roth, who has a Hendix-like style of playing. Mind you, this is clearly a hard rock album, it's just that there are more elements of prog and psychedelic than they would have in future releases.
This may not be to anyone's liking, but still this is an amazing improvement with respect to their first one. With respect to Roth, I think he was a great addition to the band, he is extremely gifted, but his style of playing conveys much more emotion than Schenker's (here or elsewhere, i think). Meine's vocals also improved, and here you know it's him singing, and you can clearly recognise him.
In sum, this is an album that surprised me a bit, in a very good way. It's still a bit atypical, but it's definitely an album I will come back much more often than I have so far.

• It may be just me, but it sounds to me that Klaus Meine's accent is quite thicker here than it would be in the future.
• Does anybody have any idea what the cover is meant to be? It looks like someone riding helicopter blades, wearing some sort of welding mask. Uli Roth didn't like it either and said: "Don't ask me what the cover means... I disliked it from the beginning."
• There are at least three songs that make references to rainbows: The title track, "Fly, people fly" (that actually says "Fly to the Rainbow") and "They Need a Million". 
• I'm going to put "They Need a Million" here. I may like "Drifting sun" a bit more, but it's the only track that has Uli Roth as a singer and, while he's quite good at it, it seemed a bit weird. This one is great too.

I think I like it, but I'm not really sure

Kiss - Hotter than Hell - 1974

Barely six months after releasing their first album, Kiss went back to the studio to record this one. Legend has it that they were after a darker sound, a la Sabbath's Master of Reality. And, well, things happened, I guess, because this pretty much sounds like Kiss, but with a murky sound that feels more like poor production than heavy metal. 

Still, it does have some really good moments, some of which are classic Kiss, like the title track, or "Let me go Rock'n'Roll", and some slightly heavier songs, like "Watchin' you" or "Strange Ways" that are actually very good and, if nothing else, show that the band was not just a one trick pony.

While this has never been one of my favourite Kiss albums, it's still a pretty good one, and it's been fun to listen to it again. 

• They really didn't work too hard on the lyrics. There's, of course, "Goin Blind", which is a sort of a love song and says "I'm 93, you're 16" (yes, I didn't mistype). But, by far, my favourite one is Peter Criss's "Mainline", which is a pretty good song but it has the line: "I need some good loving, I'm hot like an oven". Top that one, I dare you.
• Talking about "Goin' Blind": In their 1975 album Caress of Steel, Rush included a song called "I think I'm going bald", which was a parody of Kiss's song. The thought of Rush being somewhat influenced by Kiss, even if as parody, puts a big smile on my face.
• I'm picking "Watchin' you" because while it's heavier than average Kiss, it's still got their sound. Oh, and the lyrics are quite meaningless, but pretty harmless as well.

And the songs that I have sung echo in the distance

Deep Purple - Stormbringer - 1974

Ok, all the enthusiasm I had about Deep Purple MkIII was left behind in Burn, it seems to be. 

I'm not sure what this album is supposed to be, to be honest. There's, of course, the problem of Glenn Hughes's vocals, which annoy me to no end (and he is the lead singer in one song, to make it worse). But that also was present in their previous album. 

The main issue is that this is, pretty much, a funk album. Yes, yes, there are some rock elements, and not all the tracks are funk, but there's a lot of that funk sound, which was clearly brought over by Hughes, all the way from Trapeze. I don't like Deep Purple doing funk.

There are three good tracks here: The title track, "Lady Double Dealer", and "Soldier of Fortune". That's two good tracks and a great one, because "Soldier..." is brilliant. 

None of those tracks had Hughes in writing, and "Soldier..." doesn't have him singing. I don't know if you get my meaning.

Now, what I find amazing is how a band like Deep Purple, with three extremely talented musicians forming their steady lineup, would be so likely to change styles so dramatically with a change of bass player. 

It's probably not a horrible album, I might be a bit "Hughes-phobic" here. But other than those three songs, and maybe one or two more if you catch me on a good day, I wouldn't listen to it. 

• Ok, "The Gypsy" and "High Ball Shooter" are not really bad either. Not brilliant, definitely not DP brilliant, but quite ok.
• The cover picture is a 1927 photograph of a tornado, taken by Lucille Handberg. The same picture appears on the cover of Tinderbox, the 1986 album by Siouxsie & The Banshees
• And yes, of course I'm putting "Soldier of Fortune" here. It's one of the best hard rock ballads ever, and by far the best track of the album.