Deep Purple- In Rock

Wow... In literally the first 10 seconds of this album your jaw drops. This can not possibly be the music of 1970! But it is. There is an amazingly distorted guitar sound at the very beginning of the first track Speed King. After this amazing guitar intro comes an organ solo, and then its just pure hard rock. This is the album that made Bruce Dickinson become a musician, and is really just amazingly hard for the era. It may even be harder than Sabbath's eponymous debut album. Its really just amazing. The vocals are hard and at times screechy and 100% heavy metal. It's very interesting how they contrast the really hard parts with light piano solos. This album is really hard though. It almost has an Iron Maiden feel to it.

The technical chops are above average, better than Iron Butterfly and Steppenwolf and maybe on par Sabbath but definitely not better than Led Zep. This album really does rock. It is hard and strong just like rock was meant to be. Its fully distorted metal with incredible sound and riffs. It has explosive tones especially in the song Bloodsucker. Actually the whole album is explosive and feels almost like a more technically skilled Steppenwolf. The solos are pretty nice and harder than anything ever done by Page. I think that overall it is more distorted than Sabbath's first album. It has a scratchy messed up and literally distorted feel. It works well for the album though. The scratchy super distorted guitar is nicely offset by the piano.

The drumming is good enough. While not truly spectacular it does drive the music well and it does indeed provide something to the overall feel. The lyrics sound angry and hard almost screaming. This can clearly be seen as an influence to Iron Maiden and even by extension death metal. In some tracks like Child In Time show that Ian Gillan can do quieter gentler vocals. The contrast in songs like Child In Time between hard and soft is really cool and comes off well. I especially like how it progressively gets harder almost a predecessor to progressive rock. This album is really hard and powerful and has influenced so many musicians it is on its own very much a piece of music history, having influenced so many good bands.

Overall this album rocks. It features some early prog rock, some technically challenging solos a nice distorted sound, great contrast and a hard and dirty feel. I think that this album is one of the things that truly made rock and roll dangerous. This along with Sabbath's first album gave birth to real heavy metal, not normal metal, this album is really heavy and super cool and powerful. I love this album and it is a pleasure to listen to.

Overall 9/10

Deep Purple In Rock