THE BOOK OF TALIESYN

Despite fantastic cover art (some of Deep Purple's finest), and an intriguing album name, this is not a great album. The sound quality is absolutely terrible, the songs aren't very innovative or fresh, but rather bland and unnecessarily chaotic at times. But, there are some good points. There is good musicianship, and some short-lived beautiful moments. The singing is terrible, unlike other Purple releases, and lyrics just decent. But Deep Purple hadn't yet found their sound, yet. I do sound overly harsh, and this album isn't really terribly bad. If you are a huge Deep Purple fan, or a collector than go ahead and buy this album. If not, it's not an essential.