2/5 stars
You’re on thin ice when you start rebooting 40-year-old tracks that are beloved of many diehards. No matter the job you do, there will be a percentage of people who are against the project, and who’ll deride the new recordings for any manner of ills, from inauthenticity, daring to change arrangements, recording techniques, the players involved, or whatever else.
Why David Coverdale has chosen to revisit his days in the soulful Deep Purple Mark III and IV lineup by taking his shit-hot band into the studio to remake this collection of tracks from the Burn and Stormbringer albums is anybody’s guess. Coverdale is Coverdale, of course, and his honeyed vocals, now deeper and with a side order of gravelly gravitas, make the most of opener ‘Burn’ and ‘Lady Double Dealer’, but where the slow burn of ‘Mistreated’ and ‘Holy Man’ never previously failed to impress, here Cov’s voice struggles on the former, and the near-metal bluster does the songs no favours. This album is an enjoyable enough romp through an underrated phase of Deep Purple’s – and Coverdale’s – career, but it is an undeniably unnecessary folly.
In turning the heavy rock-o-meter up to 11, Coverdale has unwisely sapped many of the songs dry of the very thing that made them stand out in the first place: their soul.
The Purple Albumby Whitesnake is out through Frontiers.
