INFINITE

I guess it seems appropriate that Deep Purple would name their 20th studio album "Infinite" as it seems like their tenure might go on forever. Yes there have been line-up changes with musicians coming and going. In 2017, however, it seems like the line-up has stabilized as it has remained the same for several years now, though the album output has slowed a bit. With all of the live shows and studio sessions however, the band was feeling quite comfortable together. With a mix of old DP veterans and some impressive musicians that had replaced the DP staples such as Blackmore and Lord with Steve Morse and Don Airey, the band quickly adjusted to be able to convincingly play the classics, compose new songs that remained true to those classics and incorporate the styles of both Morse and Airey. This album would prove that this line-up was great, though some of the attempts to "update" their sound to the current sounds are a bit weak, overall, the songs are quite enjoyable and impressive.

DP is one of those bands that sparingly used progressive traits in place of their brand of blues-inspired hard rock pretty much through their entire career, so it should be no surprise that the progressive level is not present on most of the tracks here. The one exception falls right in the middle of the album and is called "The Surprising". This is most apparent in the instrumental section of the song with the cool riffs which include playing around with meter changes and goes from a nice hard-rock section to an ambient section. Then there is a bit of a reggae turn with the blues- tinged "Get Me Outta Here" where Gillan really shines.

On this album, the band also plays around a little with some nice effects. "Time for Bedlam" is the song that uses this quite well with some vocal effects applied to Gillan's vocals here and there and some nice songwriting tricks, but they still manage to retain the excellent expected instrumentation exchanges between organ and guitar. Don Airey proves he can do the Lord-style playing quite convincingly. Gillan's spirit also shows through with "Hip Boots" and Morse gets to show off during the instrumental break. There is even a level of soulfulness in "All I Got is You" which stands on its own and allows Airey to add in his own keyboard styling which fits in quite well on the album.

Yes there are lots of positives here, but there are some weaker tracks which really aren't that bad, they just don't stand out as much among the better tracks. Examples of this are "One Night in Vegas" which has some nice piano rock'n'roll chords and a bit of humor in the lyrics, but the track tends to get lost on the album. "Johnny's Band" is a fairly typical rock song about a rock band, not bad, but totally predictable and a bit less impressive, and this is followed by another standard track that contains no real surprises in "On Top of the World". On this latter song, Morse sounds like Morse, not someone else. However, there is a spoken word section on the last half of the track with an ambient base that just doesn't work.

"Birds of Prey" holds both predictable tricks and some less predictable ones (at least for DP). On one hand, it's become expected by this time on the album that when Gillan's vocals come in, the intensity tends to falter, and that happens a few times too many on this album. That is it's greatest fault. But the use of Airey's own style (not Lord's this time) and the unexpected minor to major chord change during the Morse solo (which he follows to the end of the song) make this track a standout. The last track is a The Doors cover "Roadhouse Blues". Gillan doesn't try to outdo Morrison here, and that is good. But the band handles the main riff (which I'm glad here that they retained that), throws in a harmonica and more piano honky-tonk style blues to carry out this cover quite well.

With a combination of some great albums and some not so great ones released since 1990, you never know whether you can count on each release to be great or not until you hear it. With this album, the band seems to fit together well and try some new things which sometimes works quite well and other times doesn't. But, overall, this is an enjoyable album that both convincingly reminds fans of the past but also keeps from being stale by trying new things. It seems this line-up does this better than it did in the latter years with Blackmore and Lord, who, even though they are amazing musicians, had a hard time stretching the boundaries beyond their usual sound. This is a case where if the band wanted to continue on into infinity, maybe some drastic changes were needed. In any case, this is a fun album and for the most part, a pleasure to listen to. It's a 3.5 star album that can be rounded up to 4 stars in this case.