STORMBRINGER

Mark III on the follow-up of the excellent "Burn". This album was issued quite rapidly after Burn and honestly, they should have taken more time to do so to produce an album with more good songs. As usual, I purchased it at the time of release. Quite a deception. No long tracks and quite a short album (they probably had nothing more to offer at the time). No anthem on this one.

The title and opening track is one the few good songs here. Good riff, strong vocals. A good piece of hard rock music. "Love Don't Mean A Thing" is a bluesy / soul track sounding like a Stevie Wonder one; quite disturbing and very poor. "Holy Man" is a sweet ballad which is quite unusual for the Purple : this track won't be remembered for a very long time. The longest track of the album (just over five minutes) is the second good one : "Hold On" is a mix of blues and good old rock'n'roll. An interesting combination. But, still we are really waiting for the first great moment of the album.

Turning over side-B, we finally are rewarded by our patience, "Lady Double Dealer" has a frenetic rythm (drums and bass are great), very good vocal harmonies, great Ritchie's solo. What else do we need ? Well, actually a bit more songs like this ... "You Can't Do It Right" is again very blues / soul influenced. Not my cup of tea AT ALL. "High Ball Shooter" would have been considered as a filler on most Purple album, but on Stormbringer, it is almost a highlight. Good guitar riff and strong Paice on the drums. Jon's work (as good as always) is also noticeable but iT is one of the few moments in which one can feel his influence on this album (this is sufficiently scarce to pinpoint). "The Gipsy" is a slow tempo hard rock piece of music with low vocals. During a short instrumental passage, it has a "Fools" flavour (from "Fireball"). The closing "Soldier Of Fortune" is again a ballad that one would not expect on a Purple album. Melody is nice, guitar is mellow. It sounds as an AOR song from the eighties ...

Commercially spoken, this album will not really be a great success (Nr. 6 in the UK and Nr. 20 in the US). Mark III did a better job of course with "Burn" which was also a far much better album of course (Nr. 3 in the UK, and Nr. 9 in the US). The descent is going on though. And it will almost never stop during all the Marks to come. It is one of their weakest effort so far (with "The book of Talesyn" probably). Mark IV is ready for the next album...

I must say that I do not listen to this album frequently (I guess that between 76 and 2006, I must have spinned it ... four or five times only). I would have been in real trouble if you would have asked me to name two tracks of this album. This is significant enough for a true (but not too biased) Purple fan as I am. Not too many bad songs (one or two) but really too little good ones to make this album a Purple classic. Two stars.