Review by Saxy S for Deep Purple - Deep Purple in Rock (1970)

Rock music was at a turning point during the 1970s thanks in large part to the massive contributions to the genre by a quartet of blokes from Liverpool. Most people remember the Beatles in one of two ways; either as the pop rock group selling out arenas around the world to a swathe of young people, or as the psychedelic band responsible for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, a record consider by music historians/critics as one of the most important albums of all time. For the purpose of this review, we are going to focus on that psychedelic side of The Beatles, specifically, the song "Helter Skelter" from the 1968 self-titled album (or the White Album). It is a marvel to hear the band responsible for such radio friendly pop rock songs as "A Hard Day's Night" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" would make a tune as ruckus as this and have it be received as well as it did. 

It is sometimes considered one of the first examples of a hard rock song, alongside the Kinks "You Really Got Me". Beyond 1968, their came into prominence a lot of artists looking to replicate the more aggressive side of The Beatles late work instead of the more radio friendly soft rock. And one of those bands was Deep Purple. In Rock is the bands third studio record and a real proto-metal album. The heavily distorted guitars and driving percussion are nearly unmistakable from the heavy metal formula that developed with Black Sabbath around the same time as this album. However, unlike Black Sabbath, Deep Purple have an obvious affection to the jam band style with lots of extended guitar and organ solos while not being super dark or oppressive; it is much closer to that of Led Zeppelin's sound that would come later. You could even make the claim that Deep Purple were digging deeper into the wormhole of psychedelic music than even the Beatles themselves.

And the results are phenomenal. I have always enjoyed the mixing and the execution on In Rock and listening to it again was no exception. The use of complimentary song styles and song lengths works wonders for this record as "Speed King" and "Into the Fire" are gigantic soundscapes with great choruses and hooks, while the longer tracks, especially "Child in Time", are calm and wind the listener back up into a frenzy; the joint guitar/organ solo halfway through "Child in Time" is so well implemented, before the band drops the tempo and dynamics right back down to where they were at the beginning of the track and then do it all over again! It's a literal clinic in long song structure and it's gone over the heads of way too many later progressive rock/metal bands who would much rather follow the Dream Theater approach of being quirky for its own sake and that's never worked for me.

Actually, parroting off of the point, it's amazing how much more recent metal music does take influence from Deep Purple In Rock. For starters (and likely the most direct influence) is the drum fill that concludes "Flight of the Rat", which is just the exact same outro solo on Judas Priest's "Painkiller". Or the slower, almost doom metal riff on "Into the Fire" that you might have misinterpreted if it wasn't for Ian Gillian's higher vocal timbre and wails. Deep Purple In Rock is an experimental album that keeps itself grounded and proves to be a remarkably influential album as well. It understands the rules of 1960s hard rock and then mutates them in ways beyond comprehension at the time. And that mutation would lead the band further on down the road to Machine Head, which is one of my favourite albums of all time. I wish more bands understood this today.

Best Songs: Speed King, Child in Time, Flight of the Rat, Into the Fire, Hard Lovin' Man