Label: Harvest Records (UK), SHVL 77743:50
Style: Hard Rock
Country: London, England
Time: 43:39
Format: Flac Tracks 24/96 kHz
Size: 922 Mb
Having
failed to make any significant commercial impact with three previous
albums, Deep Purple finally turned some heads following the recruitment
of vocalist Ian Gillian, bassist Roger Glover, and the premier of their
atypical but ambitious crossover project, Concerto For Group &
Orchestra, at the Royal Albert Hall in 1969. Though this classical
curiosity secured a Top 30 placing, there was a nagging sense that they
had yet to fulfil their true potential.
Recorded in snatches between
relentless gigging over a six month period, In Rock, released in June
1970, did just that. In some respects the material was a skilful
synthesis of what was already in the air. “Into The Fire” simmers some
of the juice left over from Hendrix (“Purple Haze”) and Cream
(“Politician”), “Black Night” (not originally on the album but included
on the anniversary edition) is a steroid-enhanced augmentation of the
Blue Magoos’ “(We Ain’t Got) Nothin’ Yet.” Even the album’s rhapsodic
stand-out centrepiece, “Child In Time” was itself adapted from “Bombay
Calling” by US psychedelic folk rockers, It’s A Beautiful Day. In lesser
hands a sculpting of such unlikely raw materials might not have worked.
That
it did is evidence of their strident confidence that the new line-up
had found. Deep Purple raised the bar thanks to the water-tight rhythm
section of Glover and drummer Ian Paice, who together underpinned the
diamond-hard riffing from which Ritchie Blackmore’s fast-moving
excursions would go head to head with Jon Lord’s neo-classical
noodlings, like a couple of cranked-up kamikaze. That we take the
seam-splitting cod-operatics as the norm for today’s heavy metal
tonsil-torturers is due in no small measure to lead singer Ian Gillan’s
work here. Not even Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant had the range of shrill
theatrics or glass-worrying octaves achieved by Gillan on this record.
Their
collective chutzpah was captured via the album sleeve; rarely has a
cover so presciently reflected the monumental influence its contents
would have in the years that followed. Reaching number 2 in the UK
charts in 1970, it made the band and pretty much carved out the template
for heavy rock.
(bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/pcp2/) Review by Sid Smith. 2007
Matrix side 1: SHVL 777 A-2, Side 2: SHVL 777 B-1
01. A1 Speed King (05:53)
02. A2 Bloodsucker (04:14)
03. A3 Child In Time (10:18)
04. B1 Flight Of The Rat (07:55)
05. B2 Into The Fire (03:32)
06. B3 Living Wreck (04:32)
07. B4 Hard Lovin Man (07:12)
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