BURN

This album was something of a rebirth for the band after the rather lacklustre Who Do We Think We Are album. The rebirth consisted at least partly in a rather radical line-up change: David Coverdale replaced Ian Gillan on lead vocals and Glenn Hughes replaced Roger Glover on bass and also added additional lead vocals. Burn was also the first Deep Purple album to include synthesisers, which perhaps makes it slightly progressive on the opening track and the instrumental closer A 200. The songs in between, however, are far from progressive. Instead, these are rather funky Blues rockers with some interesting bits here and there.

The title track deserves further mention. The guitar and keyboard solos on this song are great, and perhaps the earliest example of Neo-Classical Metal? Very Classically influenced anyway, and very well structured solos, far away from mindless improvisation that sometimes haunted Deep Purple's earlier efforts. The riff of the song is good as well, but unfortunately it is repeated too many times to make this a truly great song for me. They should perhaps have made it shorter, or added an additional riff to the mix? Still, I love to listen to this song and because of the solos in the middle it is one of my favourite Deep Purple songs of all time! Also the aforementioned closing instrumental A 200 is an interesting piece where the great Lord is allowed to shine.

Mistreated is often considered a classic, but I have never liked this strongly bluesy number!

Burn was a bit better recorded and produced compared to most earlier albums. Unfortunately, these improvements in instrumentation and production coincided with them going in more of a straightforward Blues rock directionon on several tracks. They are still fun to listen to, but they are not really that exciting and have very little to do with Prog.

Burn is therefore perhaps not the best place to start for Prog fans who want to explore Deep Purple. You should probably start with Fireball or Machine Head. And if you still want more after that, then Burn is a good choice!

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