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Their finest moment this century

Deep Purple in 2024; photo courtesy of earMusic, credit: Jim Rakete

Classic Rock reviews the freshly released =1:

Just when you thought arguably Britain’s finest rock band had nothing more to give, along comes what may be their final rebirth. They’re taking it on the road of course. Can anything stop them? Hopefully not.

Read more in Louder Sound.

A review (most likely the same one) also appears in the latest (#330) print issue of the magazine (with Bruce Springsteen on the cover). You can order it through newsstand.co.uk.

Thanks to Benny Holmström for the info.



6 Comments to “Their finest moment this century”:

  1. 1
    Chris says:

    Feels a tiny bit like House of Blue Light in style. I don’t think anything here beats Birds of Prey but the whole set together at first listen is probably the strongest of the Ezrin era.

  2. 2
    Fla76 says:

    bird of Pray, overall it is played impeccably as usual, but there is the usual boredom, that you find in many of the latest Deep albums: Gillan talks too much and the melody is lacking, it’s not a winner!
    Paice too relaxed, the bit is very slow.

    you are fascinated by the prog turn of recent years, but if you just listen to the first three new singles, they sound fresher, more immediate, more melodic… even Gillan in interviews underlined the importance of melody, as if he wasn’t satisfied with what they’ve done in recent years.

    I believe 100% that the creative streak with the great Steve had been exhausted since the days of Bananas, after that album the prog turn contributed to renewing it a bit, but I have heard many, too many repetitive and boring things in the last albums .

    then obviously if you have to make a best of from the Morse era, even in the last 4 albums you come up with 4 songs worthy of the best of, but in Purpendicular and Abandon you were spoiled for choice, and in Bananas you pulled out at least 6 songs

  3. 3
    MacGregor says:

    Some of these media outlets are typically carrying on like a small child in a candy store. “Just when you thought arguably Britain’s finest rock band had nothing more to give, along comes what may be their final rebirth.” Well we will place the emphasis on the word ‘arguably’. No disrespect to DP, however the extra word inserted should have been ‘one’ of Britain’s finest rock bands. But let’s not let a story get in the way of the facts. Or should that be the other way around. Maybe it was an honest typo. Sheesh what about all those other mighty rock bands that existed in that part of the world at that time & also since those heady days. Hopefully once all the dust has settled everything will settle down again to some sort of ‘normality’, we hope. Cheers.

  4. 4
    Simon says:

    @Chris

    I, after several listens, have the opposite impression. This is the weakest and most poorly produced album in the line-up with Bob. There are some great tracks, but the whole thing feels unfinished and sounds bad. They should still work on it and throw out some obviously very weak moments.

  5. 5
    David N says:

    I’ve listened to this album three times on a Sony High resolution player with Bose headphones. All I can say is it is fanfckngtastic.

  6. 6
    Fla76 says:

    John Aizlewood’s review on Classic Rock is surprising,
    i thought he was criticizing Purple, but instead I agree with many things he says (also that Turning to Crime was lackluster).

    I’ve seen several specials on different rock bands with John Aizlewood, another curly guy and a girl with blue hair talking in a superficial and aseptic way about the albums and the history of the bands…. if I didn’t know the bands they talk about, they certainly would never make me want to listen to them!…maybe one of the episodes where they seemed to have found the artist of the century was on Billy Idol, who, for goodness sake, is also good but….

    then it must be said that if you have to talk about Deep Purple at least you need 5 episodes!

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