Deep Purple gives us another helping of hard rock.
If you have ever listened to classic rock before, there’s pretty much no chance that I have to explain who Deep Purple is. Like AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, or Aerosmith, Deep Purple’s style and influence have been combed over and copied more times than most can count. Which leads me to a weird confession: I’ve never really sat down and listened to Deep Purple. I own Machine Head and Perfect Strangers like everyone else, for sure, but as for sitting down and obsessing and collecting every record like I did with AC/DC or Zeppelin, I never had that urge. So why not sit down and see what Deep Purple has been up to all these years later?
inFinite is a modestly sized album, being just about an hour long, with 9 tracks and 1 Doors cover. On the production side, things are pretty tight. The guitars and bass have some modest distortion, which gives the whole kind of prog/kind of rock style the band seems to be going for the right amount of oomf without dipping into Chad Kroeger edgy territory. This does make the guitars sound a bit muffled and muddy, but it does get the sound across without being too overbearing. Honestly, upon a second listen, I wouldn’t mind if the band but a more aggressive crunch to their sound, but aggression was so obviously not the point of this album, so I guess I can’t fault it for doing what it wanted.
On the music side of things, I was truly blown away by the sheer amount of experimentation and sounds the band was working with. The first track “Time for Bedlam” features some spoken word along with some heavy synth effects giving it a space rock sound. “The Surprising” on the other hand, ditches much of the bluesy side of the band in favor of more complex instrumentation and soloing that reminded me of a Yes song. While it was unexpected, the rabbit hole didn’t go as deep as I wanted. inFinite is certainly no prog space rock epic, so immediately the tone of the album returns to “i’ve got my babe and a beer” style blues rock/country rock the band has apparently been falling on lately. “Hip Boots” and “Johnny’s Band” just about put me to sleep following this pattern. This certainly isn’t my cup of tea so I guess I can’t be too hard on if for just being something I don’t like, but I don’t really get how anyone could like it. Do country fans really just want songs about beer and tractors over and over again, like death metal fans wanting songs about murder and gore? I kinda thought we were all better than that.
The sound of this album just waivers between diverse and interesting, like the choppy distorted drums on “Get Me Outta Here”, then bland and simple on the aforementioned “Hip Boots”. The result is an album that could have been the unique space prog rock opera the band might have been hinting at but loses its steam every 5 minutes to remind us how awesome beer and barns are. I’m sure part of me is just turning my nose up at the country tracks (country is a personal hell of mine), but the other part of me can’t see the appeal in grinding the simplicity of Deep Purple’s tracks down to the nub. It’d be like if AC/DC made a song about the fall of the titans in Greek mythology on one track, then go back to singing about fucking like their still in their late 30s on the next.
inFinite was an interesting album. When it was entertaining, it was entertaining, but when it slowed down it slowed to a crawl. I’d say if you have been enjoying Deep Purple up to this point, you will probably enjoy this one, but for those looking for something amazing and new it’s worth looking at just for the spectacle of diverse writing and the hints of complexity and genius that made Deep Purple popular in the first place.
6/10
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