WARHORSE

I have always liked Nick Simper bass playing when he was in Deep Purple. But it took decades before I could get a hold of his post DP band Warhorse. Listening to it nowadays it is easy to understand why it was not exactly a great success. The band sounds too much like- guess who? - DP. In fact Warhorse, the album sounds a lot like a mix of MK I & MK II Deep Purple,with obvious tendencies for the former. Future Rick Wakeman´s singer Ashley Holt is the vocalist here, most of the time sounding like Rod Evans, but sometimes trying to scream like Ian Gillan.

Overall the music is quite good. I was surprised by the the proficiency of keyboardist Frank Wilson, who does handle things much like Jon Lord would. In fact, all the musicians are quite good, although not in the same manner as the original DP, of course. It would be too much. But they were very good anyway, And the songs are not that bad either. Derivative? Sure, yes, but also well done.

In the end the public did not buy that much of the LP. And there was a good reason for that: with the Gillan/Glover Deep Purple at its peak, who would bother to follow a carbon copy, even a good one? But nowadays, with MKII Deep Purple long gone, you can appreciate this band a lot more. It is good early 70´s hard rock. The band certainly had both the knack for writing nice tunes and the technical ability to deliver the goods. And being able to be favorably compared to such an iconic and accomplished band as this is no small feat. With time they could probably leave the DP shadow and find their own sound. Unfortunately this was not to be. They disbanded soon after their second and final album. But left something very interesting anyway.

Rating: between 3 and 3.5 stars. Not essential in any way, but very good 70´s hard rock. if you are a fan of Deep Purple, specially the mark I version, chances are you will like Warhorse a lot.