Album Review: Deep Purple - SPLAT!

When we talk about life and maturity, we assume there comes a point at which we are supposed to grow out of certain things. With members of Deep Purple pushing 80, the days of spelling in all caps and exclamation points should be behind us, no? Deep Purple has been on a run of inspiration making new albums, but they have been coming with odd titles and terrible cover art, which one could interpret as a lack of care being put into the product. The title of this record is practically begging me to write a pun about it being a sloppy mess hitting the floor.

What I find curious about Deep Purple is that after thirty years of developing a musical identity with Steve Morse that was befitting of a veteran band growing more adept at what they do, the band has chosen now to strip things back to the barest elements. Do men of this age have it in them to make raw and raucous rock and roll? To be completely honest, no, I don't think they do.

Part of that comes down to Ian Gillan, who at his age would be forgiven for not being close to the singer he once was. I don't think anyone would expect him to be, and I don't fault him for keeping his range in its comfort zone. The issue is that what his voice can do now is not compatible with making the band heavier and more neanderthal. It only highlights the absurdity of his lyrics, like when he literally tells us in a song that he is "scriblin' gib'rish", as if we didn't know that already. Ian's word choices have been growing more concerning by the album, and his stories aren't all that much better. Maybe it's just me, but I don't want to hear someone his age singing a song called "Jessica's Bra", I'm sorry.

Gillan also goes too far on "Guilt Trippin'", where he layers the highest shrieks he has left in him on the verses, which render the lyrics utterly unintelligible. I don't know why he ever thought that vocal tone was appealing, but not that he can't do it while enunciating, it's even more infuriating. If you write a lyric, make damn sure we can hear it. Otherwise, you wasted your time and effort, as well as mine.

The biggest failure of the album, though, is that it doesn't go far enough toward what it wants to be. The band is trying to be heavy and gritty, but they don't really have that in them any more. The tempos stay lax, and the guitars lack the bite to really hit hard. The whole thing sounds like a heavy record being played back through muffled speakers, or like a live show that didn't have a good sound engineer.

Maybe it's for the best that the band spends more time in longer instrumental passages this time around, which might help with some of those issues, but lands this album outside the realm of what I want to hear. This sounds like Deep Purple trying to be Deep Purple, rather than merely being themselves. As UFO got to the end of their career, they were facing most of these same issues, but their records gave me the impression they had accepted their fate, whereas Deep Purple feels like a band that thinks they can still recapture the 70s... while in their 70s.

I know the narrative around this record is going to be that Deep Purple is still putting out great records no matter their age, or how many guitar players have come and gone. Maybe the hardcore fans will believe that, but from my vantage point Deep Purple is a band that is pumping out too much music for the sake of saying their still so active. All of these albums comes across too loose and improvised, and without enough great songs to keep me interested. Merely being and sounding like Deep Purple isn't enough.