DEEP PURPLE — Deep Purple In Rock (review)

DEEP PURPLE — Deep Purple In Rock album cover Album · 1970 · Hard Rock Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
SouthSideoftheSky
A child or their time

Together with Black Sabbath's self-titled debut album, Deep Purple In Rock might be seen as the very first Heavy Metal album ever. Gone are the (often misguided) Classical aspirations of some of the previous albums; no symphony orchestras here, also no harpsichords and no piano or acoustic guitars. They opted instead for a whole new style of music with this album, though still heavily rooted in Blues and Rock 'N' Roll.

While Deep Purple's previous self-titled album had been a perfect balance between ballads and rockers, this album contains no ballads whatsoever. It is an all out Rock album, just like the title implies and this is certainly not subtle! I can imagine that it shocked a lot of people when the thunderous introduction to Speed King came out of the speakers in early 1970.

Speed King might deceive you, but it is basically a traditional Rock 'N' Roll song updated in early Heavy Metal style. Child In Time is another deceiver, with its over ten minutes length you might expect something of a Prog epic, but it is a very simple song with a long jam as its middle section. Still, it is a classic and not bad at all, but not really interesting either.

I feel that this is still a rather immature effort and Machine Head and Fireball are better albums. The one-sided emphasis on rockers over ballads and the lack of any really 'progressive' elements stops me from giving this a higher rating. Still, In Rock is an album with great historical value and it is a pretty good album in its own right too, but not really essential for every Metal collection.
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