Deep Purple, In Rock

The previous reviewer called In Rock the best rock album of all time by anyone. I can't go that far, but it's certainly up there with the best; Deep Purple Mk II were the incarnation who really made it happen, and I think that In Rock's more straightforward rock persona (by contrast with a slightly more bluesy feel with Machine Head) will mean the debate rages on. But certainly any album that spawns Speed King, Child in Time, and Hard Lovin Man, has been be given a lot of credit. I actually think both Into the Fire and Bloodsucker are also works of art, but they struggle to get a look in.

If you like your rock straight to the point and a bit raw and dirty, then this is for you.

Deep Purple, In Rock is without a doubt the best album the band ever made -- in fact, it's the best hard rock album ever made by ANY band. What separates it from other Deep Purple albums is the studio wizardry of Martin Birch, whom the band refered to as the "catalyst" -- i.e., the man who brought it all together. Before In Rock, the band was searching to define its sound, experimenting with everything from pop to classically-oriented music, albeit with heavy overtones. With In Rock, however, the band tossed away its attempts at commercial pop success and produced an all-out hard rock sound with no holds barred. If the band had made the album live in the studio, with no overdubs, it still would rate as one of the greatest hard rock albums, but what set it apart from their earlier albums were the rich layers of overdubs, especially of Ritchie Blackmore's manic guitar work. The result was some of the best songs ever recorded in the hard rock genre. The most impressive songs on the album are Speed King, Flight of the Rat, Hard Lovin' Man, and Child in Time, the band's tour-de-force. In sum, In Rock was the band's "Sweet Spot In Time." It far outdistanced the band's other albums and set the bar so high that the band could never approach its quality again. And forget all that talk about Machine Head -- it lacked the vigor of In Rock and sounded like it was recorded in a shoe box, which is close to the truth, since the album was recorded in a trailer after the studio at Montreau burnt down.