The 'Rainbow' wagon limped into '82 with 'Straight Between the Eyes' and the glory days of classics like 'Long Live Rock & Roll' and 'Stargazer' seem a distant memory from this commercial effort. Sure, there's a couple of decent rock songs present and I've always been an admirer of 'Joe Lynn Turner's' vocals, but like the last release there's a lot of average uninspired material present. As is always the case with 'Blackmore' projects the line-up underwent a change, this time only sees keyboardist 'Don Airey' make way for 'David Rosenthal'.

The opening track 'Death Valley Driver' displays plenty of potential, heavily inspired by 'Blackmore's' former 'Deep Purple' days, is a relatively lively rocker, graced with some very solid guitaring and overall is a pretty decent song. The initial excitement is soon quenched when we descend into commercial territory with 'Stone Cold' and while far from a poor song, too predictable and tame for my liking- full marks to Joe Lynn Turner though who turns in a strong performance. The chorus heavy 'Bring on the Night' follows and while it fails to hold my interest, there's a couple of nice touches- the intro's pretty decent as is the instrumental break but all said, nothing staggering. Next up is 'Tite Squeeze', which reminds me of early 'Whitesnake' with it's bluesy approach, but all told a pretty dull affair. The balladsy 'Tearin' Out my Heart' ensues and is a pretty good example of average 80's rock, that said 'Joe Lynn Turner' continues to impress. Much worse is the damn right awful 'Power', one of the most meaningless, uninspired songs I've heard- reach for the skip-track button quickly!. Much better is the bluesy rocker 'Miss Mistreated', which is more reminiscent of 'Deep Purple' than 'Rainbow', 'Ritchie Blackmore' manages to gets in a fine guitar solo and is well supported throughout with a refined melody and a simplistic but catchy chorus. The carefree 'Rock Fever' follows and while pretty energetic, is so run-of-the-mill for the early 80's, especially with the blatant lyrics. 'Straight Between the Eyes' bows out with the semi epic 'Eyes of Fire', which at times has shades of classic early 'Rainbow', the slightly eastern influence works well and 'Joe Lynn Turner' proves his ability as he toughens up his delivery on this pretty decent closing number.

There's not much between this and 'Difficult to Cure', perhaps this is a little more consistent than the predecessor, but still a far cry from the 'Dio' days, if you like the more commercial Hard Rock, then you might take something from this release, it you're into the heavier 'Dio' material you might want take a wide berth of this.