STORMBRINGER

This album marked a complete departure from the hard rock sound most people had gotten to identify as the Purple sound. Stormbringer is a more bluesy/soul hard rock album, an album that I didn´t take much notice of until recently. I think the secret to becoming aquainted with this album is to accept that it has a strong bluesy feel.

"Stormbringer" is probably the hardest rocker on the entire album, a great opener and one of Purple´s most well known songs. Once " Love don´t mean a thing" begins, you realize that you are really listening to blues type rock with a lot of soul influences. The vocals on a lot of the tracks are shared by Coverdale and Hughes. Glen Hughes is a great soul singer! It was Stevie Wonder who actually said Hughes was one of his favorite singers! There is a great guitar and keyboard solo on "Hold On" where Ritchie really gets down and plays some beautiful blues! It´s strange that he actually left after this album because he would make a great blues guitarist.The main reason he left was because of the soul/funk influence which was coming into play.

It is an interesting album with some great bluesy rockers, "You can´t do it right" has quite a funky feel to it while "The Gypsy" has some of Ritchie´s cleanest playing with that special Blackmore tone. The bass playing on this album is really superb and you can hear the bass so clearly on headphones.

The album closes with the incredible "Soldier of Fortune", a Coverdale/Blackmore penned composition, which is a soft, slow ballad regarded by many as a Purple classic. Ritchie Blackmore recently did another version of this song with his current band, Blackmore´s Night.

It´s impossible to compare this album to "In Rock", "Fireball" or "Perfect Strangers" because there is a totally different blues feel to this album. I was tempted to give it five stars but that would be biased, so four it is!