Deep Purple, “=1.”

For a band that’s been around for more than 55 years, Deep Purple has been on a bit of a hot streak for the past decade. Its three albums of original material over that span—-2013’s Now WHAT?!, 2017’s inFinite and 2020’s Whoosh!—weren’t just artistic achievements for the hard rock pioneers but commercially successful in the streaming era, with the first two having been certified gold. With =1, however, time may be catching up with the band.

New guitarist Simon McBride meshes with the band well, as expected for someone who’s been touring with them for a few years, and the songwriting remains solid. The band simply set the bar too high with Whoosh! In 2020 Deep Purple didn’t sound like a legacy act. Those songs were fresh and fit seamlessly with the output from the band’s prime. But =1 most definitely feels like it was made by a half-century-old band.

A big part of the change is Ian Gillan’s voice. On single “Portable Door,” for example, the guitar and keyboard solos remain very good and the drumming feels roughly the same as it always has, but the vocals suffer. That’s not a knock on Gillan, who turns 80 next year. The aged delivery is not a bad thing, either. Johnny Cash’s American Recordings series is some of his best work not despite but because of the changes in his voice. But the songs need to be written with that in mind, which doesn’t seem like something the band is used to yet.

All that said, songs like “Old-Fangled Thing” still make the album worth listening to for fans of the band and the genre because they make you remember how great the ’70s were for rock and metal. The central guitar riff is energetic and heavy at the same time, something not seen since hard rock and glam metal parted ways in the early ’80s. Deep Purple shows that it’s possible and it sounds fantastic, to the point it makes you wonder why it’s not more common.

“Pictures of You”—not a cover of the song by The Cure despite Deep Purple’s last album, Turning to Crime, being comprised entirely of covers—is also a standout. It drives home the album’s quality. Deep Purple at partial strength is still better than most hard rock pioneers.

And that, overall, is the theme of =1. The song begins and it rocks. It’s tight, heavy and it’s distinctly the pioneering sound for which Deep Purple is known. Then, as the song goes on, there are reminders that while it’s the same band playing, it’s not 1972. That drop in quality from the previous few albums that actually did sound like they came out of the ’70s, is where =1 falters. It’s not fair to expect Deep Purple to defy time forever. But it’s also fair to compare Whoosh! and =1 because they’re consecutive albums of original material.

In my review of Whoosh! I recommended it to modern rock fans as an example of what the genre used to be, because it showed what a previous generation can do without feeling dated. For =1, I can wholeheartedly recommend it to fans of Deep Purple and ’70s hard rock, but fans of modern hard rock may not see the appeal. And that’s OK. May we all still be doing good work while pushing 80 years old, even if it’s not the same as what we could do at 30.

Follow publisher Daniel J. Willis at @bayareadata.press on BlueSky.