Read over 170 more reviews in Issue #115

Deep Purple are legends. It’s a word that gets thrown around a lot in the music industry, but with these guys, it really means something. Several line-up changes over a fifty-eight-year span (although they were inactive between 1976-1984), twenty-three previous studio albums by my reckoning, more live releases than I care to count… now they’re back again with a new album and damn, if they haven’t gone up yet another gear.

Vocalist Ian Gillan claims the band are “very much back in with material that is compatible with ‘Highway Star’, ‘Smoke On The Water’, ‘Lazy’ – the dynamics, the balance, and the fun of the music we made from ‘69 to ‘73.” It would be easy to dismiss this as PR hyperbole, until you hear opening track ‘Arrogant Boy’, a rollicking effort featuring that classic interplay between an amped-up Hammond organ and electric guitar. Yes, it may be Don Airey and relative newcomer Simon McBride handling those duties now, rather than Ritchie Blackmore and Jon Lord, but there’s something about it that is quintessentially Deep Purple. Losing a guitarist of Morse’s tenure and calibre would finish most bands, but as I said when I reviewed 2024’s ‘=1’ album, the hiring of McBride has been a revelation that has reinvigorated the band. Here, on just his second studio effort, alongside Gillan, Airey, Roger Glover, and ever-present Ian Paice, he gels so well it sounds like he’s been in the band all his life. The guitar and organ back and forth on ‘Diablo’ is exquisite, ‘The Lunatic’ is textbook Purple, and McBride’s influence throughout the fun ‘Jessica’s Bra’ is obvious.