SLAVES AND MASTERS

Slaves & Masters is Deep Purple's most uneven album, sounding sometimes way too similar to Turner-Rainbow-era, while it's not mainly the fact of having Joe on vocal duties, which by the way is a great singer, though a bit more in the AOR-ish style than in the Heavy Rock realm of vocalists, the similaritie is due to Ritchie's song-writing, being very parallel to that of Rainbow from some few years back. The riffs, the chorus', etc..

However, for Deep Purple standards this is not that of a low-weight, due to previous release, The House of Blue Light, which was simply weak. Slaves & Masters is not weak, on the contrary is the pretty fresh for Deep Purple's catalogue, and makes a place of it's own, while by no means in the heights of their 70's classics, first of all because the music in here is not Heavy Rock, second Jon Lord's organ is layed-back, definitely something not usual for DP, and last but not least, there's the, sort-of, cheesy feel due to Joe's vocals, however like I said earlier, he's not a bad singer at all, he's just not meant for Deep Purple.

To finalise this short review, I'll just mention some highlights which can stand pretty well alongside the best tunes from Perfect Strangers, House of Blue Light, The Battle Rages On and of course alongside the best tunes from Rainbow-Turner era. These are: the catchy, but with a dark atmosphere ala Perfect Strangers, opener, King of Dreams; then there's the fantastic bluesy-esque Fire in the Basement, with it's killer riff, and it's mind-blowing organ solo; then there's the extremely catchy, and almost sing-along style, semi-hard rock tune, Breakfast in Bed; finally, the closer, Wicked Ways, is something worthy to check if you liked tunes from their 2 previous albums, with a very blurry prog feel, with it's short, simple, but very effective instrumental passage with strings and a guitar solo leading it, it's SO INTENSE! just make you sure to hear it with loud speakers!

All in all, the album has a good bunch of enjoyable AOR/semi-Hard Rock tunes, more than those from The House of Blue Light, and definitely more entertaining than from those.

I find it a good album, there's barely 2 songs I don't enjoy from it, so I have to give it a 3 stars rating, with the definition of a 2 stars. It's good, but definitely for fans from Deep Purple AND Rainbow.

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