Godz of War
Don Airey’s new album Pushed to the Edge is now out for streaming and download, and here is another single from it — Godz of War:
Physical formats (CD and 2LP) to follow on April 11, 2025.
Thanks to BraveWords for the heads-up.
![[hand]](/hs-pics/portraits/hands/morse7.jpg)
![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/morse3.jpg)
Don Airey’s new album Pushed to the Edge is now out for streaming and download, and here is another single from it — Godz of War:
Physical formats (CD and 2LP) to follow on April 11, 2025.
Thanks to BraveWords for the heads-up.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Is it me, or maybe the title of the song put this thought in my head, does the vocalist sound as if he’s trying to sing like Ronnie James Dio?
March 29th, 2025 at 05:07This is sounding more and more like the 80’s into the 90’s progressive metal. Ala what then became Dream Theater etc. At least Dream Theater had a decent drum sound, (here we go, here we go, here we go again). This mix is all keyboards and vocal, until the guitar solo steps in and then it is back to all keyboards and vocal again. Not a good mix by the sound of it. Not to worry. At least Don is getting a chance to let his hair down, if you know what I mean. Cheers.
March 29th, 2025 at 05:48OMGoW, he should pay royalties to Ritchie and Dio/Bonnet/White for this (especially the first part with the vocals), could it be that Don once played with Rainbow? 🤣 Talk about it having left a mark.
It starts like a Rainbow track with Ritchie’s guitar mixed into the background and the keyboards mixed up (the keyboarder just having heard his ELP collection front to back before recording) before it morphs into this vintage Purple Hammond romp.
For all my humorous poking, it has some real balls and you hear the enthusiasm with which it is played. That is actually something very typical of Don, you always hear the enthusiasm in his playing, here’s a man who has truly found his calling. Lack of great dress sense or not, that really endears him to me.
I get a distinct feeling that Gregg Giuffria, while visually not quite in the same category of being inconspicuous, would approve of Don’s solo ventures! 😂
https://youtu.be/zXNNqucAl-s
March 29th, 2025 at 14:31great and mature album…hard rock album 2/5 purple!!!
March 29th, 2025 at 16:29I often wonder why the music labels are not taking a gamble on making a musical about the DP family tree musical catalogue and tour around the world in theatres.
March 29th, 2025 at 16:42Surely the wealth of music makes an amazing 90 min of a stage musical.
Peace ✌️
Listening to it as I write. It’s heavy, even dense album, Don Airey as the Toni Iommi of keyboards 🎹 (with a complete set of digits I hasten to add!). You won‘t hear organ this loud on any current album except Uriah Heep releases. 😂 But that is ok, Don has his name on it & that means – as he learned from Ritchie – ultimate fader control.
It‘s thinking man‘s keyboard-heavy heavy rock with outright PROG influences, dramatic vocal lines (which perhaps I‘m these days no longer as great a fan of as when I still had wet dreams) and a penchant for Arabic scales. The band sounds really determined, no session muso pussy-footin‘ here, men at work.
And it has to be said: This album is more “rawk!!!” than anything Jon Lord ever recorded outside of DP. Jon was great in DP of course, but he needed Ritchie’s, Tommy’s or Steve’s guitar to latch onto. That is not a knock, Jon’s ability to “melt in” was uncanny and a sign of great musicality, but he had – except when soloing – a more supportive role than Don who has evolved into a heavy rock “lead-keyboarder” by heart.
Best Atomic Rooster album I’ve heard since the early 70s. Vincent Crane would approve.
https://images.app.goo.gl/2Y1viwERMFtdzAQt5
March 29th, 2025 at 17:04Yes Uwe, maybe Don did know Cozy and also Gary Moore a bit too well, hence the ‘Barbarian at the Gates’ approach to the keyboards. I had to include Cozy and your saying, it is rather apt here with this album by the sound of it. Although Cozy would not approve of that drum sound! I get the Tony Iommi nod also, Never Say Die. And the Atomic Rooster one too, well done. Death Walks Behind You is the album that you refer to no doubt, dark and heavy. Regarding Jon Lord, well he was from a totally different background as we know and he is far too pastoral for any venture into ‘heavy metal’ as such. Don has mixed with a lot more of the ‘heavy’ musicians in many of his musical ventures. Cheers.
March 29th, 2025 at 22:48Danny Devito probably wouldn’t approve either Uwe???????? I forgot to mention a response to Ken Hensley’s heavy Hammond playing and his sound from the 70’s Heep in particular. I am not sure of today’s ‘Heep’ with Phil Lanzon playing the keys, no doubt he would surely emulate that earlier sound and feel in certain areas. I do deliberately leave Emerson, Lake and Palmer out of this simply because they were not that heavy as band. It was more Keith’s approach to the keyboards that was very powerful. However the Emerson, Lake and Powell album is much heavier in that regard. Blame poor ole Cozy I suppose and the dreaded 1980’s production and sound. All good though, except poor ole Danny Devito? Cheers
March 29th, 2025 at 23:24Interesting. Definitely going to get it. I like Uwe’s comment about Airey being the Iommi of the keyboards. As for Jon needing Ritchie’s, Steve’s or Tommy’s Guitar to latch onto, I’d say he also pushed them which certainly made for some exciting music. As Steve once said, Jon would hear something he came up with and immediately grasp what to do with it. Post DP though, Jon made excellent albums! My favorite is “To Notice Such Things”! My late beautiful Wife, Brenda, while not much of a DP or Rainbow fan, loved Jon’s albums and also Blackmore’s Night! Wish she were still here to listen to them with me. 🙂
March 30th, 2025 at 16:14Adel @ 5: Or a sea cruise with with all musically active DP members performing with their various bands: The living breathing DP, Blackmore’s Night, Joe Lynn Turner, Glenn Hughes, Steve Morse Band, Simon McBride’s trio, Don Airey Band, Nick Simper, Little Ian doing his Buddy Rich thing, Roger & Big Ian performing choice cuts from Accidentally On Purpose, and if DC can’t sing anymore, he could be the conférencier through it all and give interviews.
I’d sign up for that “Purple Cruise” in a second! It would be glorious.
March 31st, 2025 at 09:27@10
“I’d sign up for that “Purple Cruise” in a second! It would be glorious.“
Ich auch!
March 31st, 2025 at 11:55Sorry for your loss, Leslie, but it’s beautiful for you have those memories.
My wife always thought the Jon Lord gigs the high point of the Purple Family too, she’ll also go to Blackmore’s Night gigs, but getting her to a Purple gig is hard work and I couldn’t drag her by her hair to a Glenn Hughes one! 🤣
Speaking of: I’m seeing Glenn on Friday …
https://rockmeetsclassic.de/#informationen
… which might culminate in him singing one or two verses of ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ as that song will very likely be the final encore to the event. 🙄
I do find those Rock Meets Classic packages generally more than slightly cringe, especially with a lot of the presented artists never having been members of the original (or at least of an important) line-up of their respective bands, but Glenn drew my curiosity. I’ve been to one before where Ian Gillan (the encore for all to join in being inevitably SOTW) was the top act and although he toured with them a few more times, even his presence could not bring me to go again (and that is saying something).
Calling anybody who is not named Noddy Holder, Jim Lea, Don Powell or Dave Hill “ex-Slade” is a heinous crime. 😑
March 31st, 2025 at 12:05Hard to listen first, but give a couple listens and it really starts to grow and sounds great 😀
March 31st, 2025 at 12:20To me this sounds like Jeff Wayne’s War Of The Worlds (took about a second to realise this).
March 31st, 2025 at 12:21Hello and thank you for the article. I’ve just got this album in Japan (“Live in Hamburg” was also included for limited edition)… What a cool metal album!! I really love it🥰
March 31st, 2025 at 14:06@ 10- Uwe’s ‘Sea Cruise’ looks like a battle of the ego’s in many ways. Imagine being a journalist at that. Who is pulling who’s hair, who threw that? What did he or she say? What do you mean we cannot play THAT song? On and on the battle would rage. Sounds like a Netflix ‘wanna be’ clash of the titans movie. Oh the drama of it all. Cheers.
March 31st, 2025 at 22:36It sure wouldn’t be boring, that cruise! And I wouldn’t mind hearing competing versions of SOTW from DP, GH & The Lady of Long Island Sound:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8SZmb51E8s
(Ritchie’s two solos are actually excellent in this impromptu version.)
Plus I would sacrifice my life vest AND my seat in a lifeboat to hear Glenn and DC do an unplugged session of soul & blues covers.
April 1st, 2025 at 19:45Flash thought, maybe we could get Ritchie’s son Jürgen from his first marriage to join the Purple Cruise too? His version of SOTW – together with Ms Silvia Kaufmann, a Swiss Schlagersängerin especially famous in Mallorca – would really stand out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DclDXrrMCyQ
https://www.bzbasel.ch/zentralschweiz/luzern/musik-ettiswilerin-verschlagert-deep-purple-hymne-ld.29636
https://img.sparknews.funkemedien.de/1030969/1030969_1478127357_v16_9_1600.webp
April 2nd, 2025 at 11:33@17
“Plus I would sacrifice my life vest AND my seat in a lifeboat to hear Glenn and DC do an unplugged session of soul & blues covers.”
🤣🤣
April 2nd, 2025 at 18:17Personally I wouldn’t mind tip you over ☺️
Re: #14 – That was the first thought that I had also about War of the Worlds.
And I do hear the ELP in it also (Kinda hard to miss as well)
April 2nd, 2025 at 18:57We just have to listen to Don Airey with Cozy Powell on Cozy’s wonderful ‘solo’ albums from the late 70’s and into the 80’s. Over The Top, Octopuss and Tilt. That is where you will find the ‘bombastic’ arrangements, killer riffs and subtle beauty of melodic playing etc. Jack Bruce and Neil Murray on the bass, Bernie Marsden, Gary Moore and Clem Clempson on guitars depending on which track. etc. They are my ‘go to’ arrangements and compositions with Don at his grandest, not to mention Cozy and Gary Moore. Uwe, don’t roll your eyes! The version of ‘The Loner’ is on that OTT album with Clem on guitar. On ‘Octopuss’ Mel Galley and Colin Hodgkinson make an appearance and Jon Lord is credited too. Jeff Beck credited on two tracks on Tilt, a rather commercial song or two on that album. Cheers
Over The Top album below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrVNA5Ajsfg&t=391s
April 2nd, 2025 at 23:42This review mentions both ‘War of the Worlds and Cozy and Don’s work back in the day. For the track Godz of War especially. Cheers.
https://getreadytorock.me.uk/blog/2025/03/album-review-don-airey-pushed-to-the-edge/
April 3rd, 2025 at 06:37I don’t, lieber Herr MacGregor. Roll my eyes I mean. All that instrumental and soundtrack’ish Jeff Beck’esque music that often featured Cozy, Don or Gary Moore with the dramatic to pompous Emerson’ish keyboards in the late 70s and 80s doesn’t rub me the wrong way, it’s not really jazz rock of US quality for me (it lacks the funk and jazzy airiness for that), but it sounds infinitely better to my ears than Cozy rushing MOTSM or Don’t Break My Heart Again to death or clobbering Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City (let’s not forget that Cozy was much to his chagrin asked to leave Peter Green’s Splinter Group because his drumming was deemed unsuitable for blues rock). Cozy had what I call a “circus approach” to drumming, he liked to drum in a grandiose, larger than life fashion that I found a little silly at times in its pomposity, but you know that I actually deemed his drumming to fit Emerson, Lake & Powell’s similar music best. I’ve read that Cozy vastly enjoyed playing that music (and – unusual for him – rehearsed hard getting Carl Palmer’s parts right), but that Greg Lake just didn’t get along with him, apparently not Cozy’s fault, Lake seemed to be a handful.
April 3rd, 2025 at 11:00Those Cozy Powell albums are more interesting than a lot of what was coming out of some of our favourite rock musicians (bands) at that time (late 70’s into the early 80’s). To my ears at least. Plenty of instrumental prowess from all involved and a wonderful diverse range of music too. And it is a stellar cast of world class musicians involved. A few vocal songs also on the Tilt album, wonderful they are. Of course we also had Jon Lord’s Before I Forget at that time (1982) also a rather good take on the mostly but not all instrumental music. Now let’s see what we had from our so called esteemed ‘other’ bands at that time. Whitesnake, (take it or leave it, some good, some not so good and rather predictable in many ways, I did like quite a lot of the British Snake at that time and still do), Rainbow (well some of that is very good, but we know about the AOR commercial take on things. And the Gillan scenario, again a hit and miss situation for different reasons and look where that did end up. Gary Moore had some good songs here and there at that time that have held up rather well over time. So for me Cozy’s albums did have much more musically and also exciting in the compositions than the proverbial British ‘hard’ rock bands at that time. Each to their own. Yes Cozy did fit well enough into ELP, a good album, it was always going to be big sounding album with both Emerson and Cozy involved and the concerts also did get very good reviews at the time. They initially wanted Palmer of course but that other AOR dross (Asia) was his (Palmer’s) bread and butter at that time. Greg Lake, yes we do a read little about his difficult nature, not to worry as we know many of those musicians have there own ways of getting it down and then burning a few relationships along the way. Regarding the Peter Green project, well that would be a bore fest most probably anyway, no loss there for Cozy. Cheers.
April 3rd, 2025 at 22:14Cozy was instrumental in getting Peter Green back to gigging in spite of his (Peter’s) continuing psychological challenges and, according to Neil Murray, tried his best to play as bluesy-subdued with him as possible (given Cozy’s own somewhat less than feather-groovy style). It still didn’t work, so he was asked to leave while Neil stayed on for a while (but was unhappy about the situation). He was still playing with Peter Green when Cozy had his fateful car crash not wearing a seat belt in his Saab (how can you drive a Saab or a Volvo – crash security influenced car brands both – and not put on the seat belt?).
What Cozy would have needed was something power trio’ish like ELPo or Cream/BBM (he made the attempt pre-Rainbow with Strange Brew which featured Dave ‘Clem’ Clempson and Greg Ridley, both from Humble Pie) where his type of larger than life drumming could have been put to best use. Or that likewise aborted project with Johnny Winter and Rick Derringer (playing bass). The post-Nirvana 90s were not a good time for finding record company backing for something like that.
April 4th, 2025 at 10:28Cozy isn’t a ‘blues ‘drummer at all, many drummers are not. It is a boring genre and as we know a well worn path. I do remember reading about the Peter Green project back then and I had a listen to some of that, not my cup of tea however it was good to see Green getting back into music again. I guess Cozy likes to mix it up as many others do, hence the cross over to ‘progressive’ rock. Trying to get that alternative with a little bit of all the genres is a good one in some aspects. Diversity again. Some people don’t like the too busy approach to music, some don’t like the simplistic and shorter song format. I like that crossover as long as it has good melodies and clever arrangements. As I said a while ago his drumming changed with Rainbow, he wasn’t like that with Jeff Beck. That hard hitting bombastic approach to rock music. That is what Blackmore wanted so Cozy adapted to it and it did ‘affect’ his approach to rock music from then on I feel. He didn’t really ever change back, well not in rock bands at least. That is why Iommi wanted him and even in Sabbath he was ‘over the top’ at times, pun intended. Those ‘solo’ albums have that diversity for me, a bit of everything, I don’t like all of it, but most of it is good and it gives me a little more than the bands I mentioned at that time, the early to mid 80’s. A more interesting than songs all the time approach and we get to hear Jack Bruce and other wonderful musician stretching out a little in a ‘rock’ setting. Bruce was too jazzy with his solo records, I found him linking up with Robin Trower in the early 80s’ and there are some wonderful songs and playing on those two records and again in 2009 with the Seven Moons record and tour. I wasn’t aware of the Johnny Winter aborted project. I couldn’t see the working either, Winter is too bluesy all the time, it is hard blues but there are not many changes in direction in what I have heard from him. I went to a gig of his in 1986 and after a while it does get too repetitive. Powerful in its delivery though. Regarding your post over at the ‘rocky old road’ comments on Don Airey. I was also not aware as to Cozy wanting back into Rainbow in 1981. Not sure how long that would have lasted either as the AOR attempt by Ritchie was in a fuller mode by then and Cozy reportedly loathed that approach. Cheers.
April 4th, 2025 at 21:26Talking of Cozy Powell and here is the band at that time (1980) including Don Airey, Clem Clempson and Jack Bruce performing The Loner. Max Middleton is also on the keyboards and he composed the tune. Those mounted toms on Cozy’s kit are way too big, oh well. The second link below is Jack Bruce’s band performing in 1975 featuring guitarist Mick Taylor and the USA jazz musician Carla Bley. Note the drummer Bruce Gary went from this ‘fusion’ music to the band The Knack and their hit ‘My Sharona’. Now that is diversity isn’t it. Cheers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Finwu6119VM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfmR-O-qELA
April 4th, 2025 at 23:50That’s a very good analysis of how Cozy’s drumming evolved over time, Herr MacGregor! I agree that his drumming with the Jeff Beck Group was perhaps the most creative and free-form.
That attempt to get him into a three piece with Johnny Winter and Rick Derringer was in the early to mid 70s – when Johnny was still the wild albino hard rock axeman as opposed to the later blues aficionado. Powell wanted Derringer to play bass (Rick had deputized on bass during the get-to-know-each-other sessions), but the latter didn’t want to give up guitar and had his solo career in mind. That is why it fell apart – of course back then Johnny was likely still a heroin addict.
I could have seen it working, it would have been this hugely energetic trio with Winter’s liquid guitar, Cozy’s powerhouse drumming and Derringer weaving through both of them on bass, they type of band which would have ruled open air and stadium gigs, sort of Ten Years After’s Goin’ Home for 90 minutes on end. 😂 There was a market for that in the US.
April 5th, 2025 at 18:52That band with Cozy and Johnny Winter back in the early 70’s may have worked Uwe. For some reason I presumed it may have been a later on proposition. There were quite a few trio’s back then as we are aware, so yes, it could have been something. When we think about trio’s: Beck, Bogart & Appice, Grand Funk, West, Bruce & Laing, The James Gang, ZZ Top, Taste and many more I have not thought of at this moment. Coming from the late 60’s with Cream and Hendrix yes indeed, the power trio was a big thing. In 1986 Johnny Winter was a very powerful concert and heavy in it’s delivery. I have not witnessed many trio’s in action, not on the international scene. The Steve Morse Band in 1993, not a power trio as such. Eric Johnson also in 2000 era, same as SMB. But that older heavier style of a trio is something indeed, even if it is a tad limiting after a little while. Hence Rory Gallagher adding a keyboard player after Taste and then Rush adding a few extra instruments to their arsenal after commencing as a hard rock trio. Cheers.
April 5th, 2025 at 22:10great album from Don Airey! I heard it the last 3 days every day minimum 3 times! love it! Thank you Don!
April 6th, 2025 at 07:44