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"Last album of Deep Purple with Ritchie Blackmore, "The Battle Rages On" is a tense and nervous album, far from the AOR shores of the two previous albums"
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4/5
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A lot of upheavals have shaken Deep Purple since its reformation less than ten years ago in 1984 and Joe Lynn Turner will have been the singer of the band only for one album. While he had put his voice on some demos of the future album, he is removed from the project to leave the place again to Ian Gillan. The relationships between this last one and Ritchie Blackmore remain however tense (I quote: "Blackmore, the problems of hemorrhoids, he does not know! He's a perfect asshole"), but Gillan seems to have come back to stay and the future will prove him right.
"The Battle Rages On" is without a doubt the most tense and nervous album of the reformation. We feel this pressure from the first to the last note. The musicians return to a hard and heavy Rock, far from the AOR shores of the two previous albums. Even if Deep Purple remains trapped in the sounds that slow down its progression, it manages to change the deal by offering a more sophisticated music.
Recorded in Bearsville New York and released on July 19, 1993, "The Battle Rages On" starts with a rumbling organ, a heavy and fat guitar (Blackmore uses here a new model from Fender) and a Gillan who comes back to haunt our ears... The sound, limpid, lets show all the ardour of the protagonists.
Each musician takes part in the composition to give sometimes atmospheric titles as the direct and all in break 'Talk About Love', 'Lick It Up' and 'One Man's Meat', others rich in melodies as 'Time To Kill'. The frenetic 'Twist In The Tail' is a kind of 'Dead Or Alive' much more convincing and compact in which Jon Lord illuminates the whole with his magic fingers just like on the superb 'Solitaire'. This track, with its poignant lyrics and strong aura, seems to be unanimously accepted by the band's fans.
To finish, how can we not mention 'Anya', a sublime track with a riff often compared to the one of 'Child In Time'. It starts in a masterly way under Blackmore's dry guitar and then explodes in memorable verses and choruses. These are here the last traces of an epic and mystic Deep Purple before Blackmore's departure to Rainbow.
If some of the tracks don't pass the test of many listenings, "The Battle Rages On" can be listened to without skipping a track and it is already, in itself, a great success. It is just as deserving as the famous "Perfect Strangers". It is also the last album with Ritchie Blackmore, the last offering of the man with the white Fender to the fans of the band, who in the middle of a tour, decides to give up the business, replaced at the last minute by a freshly bald Joe Satriani. - Official website
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TRACK LISTING:
01. The Battle Rages On - 05:57
02. Lick It Up – 04:00
03. Anya – 06:32
04. Talk About Love – 04:08
05. Time To Kill – 05:51
06. Ramshackle' Man – 05:34
07. A Twist In The Tale - 04:17
08. Nasty Piece Of Work - 04:37
09. Solitaire – 04:42
10. One Man's Meat – 04:39
LINEUP:
Ian Gillan: Chant
Ian Paice: Batterie
Jon Lord: Claviers
Ritchie Blackmore: Guitares
Roger Glover: Basse
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(0) MIND(S) FROM OUR READERS
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Top of the page
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(0) COMMENT(S)
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READERS
3.4/5 (7 view(s))
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STAFF:
3.2/5 (8 view(s))
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IN RELATION WITH DEEP PURPLE
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LAST INTERVIEW
DEEP PURPLE (OCTOBER 2020)
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While the band was supposed to put an end to its legendary career, Deep Purple is back with a new album, "Whoosh!", as successful as unexpected, that guitarist Steve Morse came to present to us.
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OTHER REVIEWS
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OTHER(S) REVIEWS ABOUT DEEP PURPLE
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