SouthSideoftheSky Never mix food and music!

Jokes aside, this is a surprisingly good Deep Purple album. Only the cover art is abysmal, nothing about the music is. Not at all! House Of Pain kicks off the album at a high pace, and Deep Purple still got it. The heavy Sun Goes Down almost sounds like Black Sabbath in places. Haunted has grand piano, orchestration and female background vocals which is very surprising, and it really works!

I will not mention all the songs here, but I must point out that this is one of the most varied albums Deep Purple has ever made. Haunted is not the only track that is slower than what we are used to. The atmospheric closer Contact Lost, the bluesy ballad Walk On and the folky acoustic Never A Word are also in a slower mode than usual for this band. A blues ballad might not be too surprising though, but the latter song is a big surprise. And it is excellent! It features a great vocal melody and some quiet harpsichord (- ish) keyboards in the background. Beautiful!

The rest of the album is pretty straightforward Deep Purple material, but energized and not tired and old like on many of their more recent albums. Don Airay has replaced Jon Lord here, and that might be a factor that re-energized the band. Surprisingly, Airey sounds very much like Lord. I have always liked Airey (he worked with Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, Gary Moore and many others), but he never sounded like this before. Steve Morse guitar work is great (as always), and the older members are somehow re-vitalized by the “youngsters”.

Fans of classic Deep Purple will not be disappointed by this album.

Go Bananas!