Deep Purple – Splat! Review

Amid the band’s drummer saying he doesn’t mind if artificial intelligence copies his work and an 86-date world tour that is likely to run a few members into the ground, Deep Purple are in deep waters. Splat!, their latest studio album and a follow-up to the surprisingly solid =1, offers another batch of rock and ready songs with that Deep Purple style, whatever that may sound like. Last original member standing Ian Paice is behind the kit once again and seems relegated to a bit-part player role in a band he has been with since 1968. It matters not on Splat! because of the decent rock and roll work to come through overall. Those are the moments that matter throughout this latest album, and it comes to life more than a few times. Like many aged rock bands, there are dud moments where Deep Purple are in over their heads when, way back when, they would’ve revelled in the challenge of new and exciting material. That time has passed but Splat! is still a bit of good fun. 

From the first moments of Splat!, you can hear the influence of Roger Glove and Don Airey. Rainbow lite is opening track Arrogant Boy, but what a song it turns out to be. You have to lower your expectations a little bit with what to expect here, this is a decades-old rock band with half the original members missing, after all. But what’s left over is some magnificent instrumental work that keeps Deep Purple as a concept steaming ahead. Paice is keen to play support here and so the rest of the band adapts to that with instrumentally slick and stylish offerings. They delve further into prog-rock territory and allow guitarist Simon McBride a little more space to play around. It makes all the difference and you can hear on Diablo the trust the band now has in him to lead the charge. Decent vocal work from Ian Gillan and Airey’s ongoing, Rick Wakeman-like keyboard fanciness is a thrill too. Classic and classy old school rock is what you get from The Rider, and that’s thanks to Gillan’s vocal strengths.  

For the passing listener who knows the band from that one track about smoky water, you may be wondering what the hard rock pioneers can offer the genre. There’s still fuel in the tank and the likes of The Lunatic and Third Call are strong pieces of work that suggest this iteration of Deep Purple still has plenty to give. There’s enough instrumental variety at play throughout Splat! to warrant a listen. This is not Deep Purple staking their claim to an already ventured part of rock history. They’re trying and succeeding in some parts at building a bigger, bolder album. Soft steps toward that can be heard and they do a solid job of it all. By the sounds of Guilt Trippin’, the band is keen to take risks in this new, prog-rock-adjacent environment. Plenty of reliance on the keyboards and percussion, as though they’re not all that confident in the guitar work and yet let it rip and roar through other parts of the album. A bit of an imbalance, but great fun all the same.  

Enough to win over dedicated Deep Purple fans and plenty more for those who are making one of their first forays into their discography. A bit of an everything, everywhere album. It works, but it has its limits. Splat! begins to lose that special, specific energy around the midpoint and doesn’t quite recover at any point. Moments of interest after that, but nothing that stands out from the overwhelming sub-genre change-up. A nice reminder that Deep Purple can still offer a worthy bit of material, though, that much can be heard clearly across this release. A strong title track to close the album out lingers on the mind well, and with some fairly refreshing and intense instrumental work, Deep Purple maintain their status. They are not just hard-hitting rockers with legendary work behind them, but a contemporary band, albeit with little to say.