COME TASTE THE BAND

This album is definitely better than Stormbringer and much more pleasant to listen to either. But Come taste the Band sounds more like a forerunner to Whitesnake and that means the band wasn't coming even close to the standards of the masterpieces of 1970-72. But The Black Beast on guitar went and took his hardrock with him to form Rainbow. And so we can see why Stormbringer was such a failure. The soul-pop really didn't go too well with what Mr Blackmore had in mind. And so the transformation from a hardrock outfit to a soul-pop band was complete with this new record. As long as the band plays it slow and mellow, all is well. The problems are now in the hardrock department. When they try to rock, they become banal. One example: Lady Luck goes well with every Whitesnake album but is not good enough for a DP record.

This is a good album, but there is no prog here. So by prog standards this would be one star. Since this rating would be unfair by any other standard I give it 3 stars.