In late 1973 Deep Purple had really broken through as one of the major heavy rock acts in the entire world. They had produced classic album after classic album. However, things almost came to an end for the band when singer Ian Gillan quit the band for various reasons and bassist Roger Glover was let go shortly after. The three remaining band members had to come up with some new talent and quick if they were going to keep on the high rise. Fortunately, with the arrival of virtually unknown (at the time) vocalist David Coverdale (who would later form and front Whitesnake) and bassist/backing vocalist Glenn Hughes (more projects than I can list) and a change in their sound on their 8th studio album Burn the band managed to get even hotter.
During Deep Purple's Mark II line-up with Gillan and Glover the band had a rather straight up hard rock/borderline heavy metal feel to it. However, with Burn things took a more bluesy, funky, and soulful feel. The sound was still bold, out there, and larger than life but this time it had a new direction thanks to the new blood. You can definitely still hear the Ritchie Blackmore/Jon Lord guitar/organ power house just tearing it up and Ian Paice is just as much of an insane rhythm machine as ever.
Burn in my opinion is one of the single greatest tracks to ever open an album. It's uptempo, got a killer main guitar riff, blistering yet melodic guitar and organ solos, intense vocals, and much, much more. This is probably the closest to a Mark II song that was on the entire album. More importantly, it was basically a song to give Mark II the finger and let the whole world know that even though Deep Purple was changing it was still the best damn rock n' roll band on the entire planet and wasn't going anywhere any time soon.
Sail Away is one of those tracks that in my opinion sadly gets often overlooked when people delve into and discuss the Deep Purple catalog. It has a lot of splendid funky synth work from Lord with some great back and forth lead vocals from Hughes and Coverdale. The guitar riff while rather repetitive is catchy and the slow mystical solos work into the mix absolutely great. It really does feel like you're being whisked away on a strange dark magical journey the moment you hear the first note of the song.
Burn is one of the most important and essential records of Deep Purple's entire career. It shows that the band was capable of doing so much more than just heavy or pop rock. Whatever they put their passion into they did absolutely phenomenal at. I personally love this record from start to finish, but most people will find at least a few tunes on here that stick with them in a good way. If you're the kind of person who likes genre fusions then this is definitely the album for you.
Burn, by Deep Purple receives 5 out of 5 stars.
Track List:
1. Burn
2. Might Just Take Your Life
3. Lay Down, Stay Down
4. Sail Away
5. You Fool No One
6. What's Going On Here
7. Mistreated
8. "A" 200
Buy the album on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Burn-DEEP-PURPLE/dp/B00123KER8/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1474619545&sr=8-2&keywords=burn+deep+purple
Writer's Moment:
Sorry about missing yesterday's post. Some personal stuff came up and I wasn't able to do it. I'll make up for it by doing the post Saturday instead when I would normally take the day off.
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