Reviews roundup – Deep Purple vs. King King vs. Other View

Reviews roundup – Deep Purple vs. King King vs. Other View

DEEP PURPLE
Johnny’s Band
earMusic

Here’s the new single from the latest Deep Purple album. And for some reason the record company have picked one of the weakest songs from what is a generally strong LP.

“Johnny’s Band” is an inconsequential piece of fluff that whizzed by on the album without any urge to hit repeat. But it’s like gold dust next to the ‘In & Out Jam’ which is exactly that. Three minutes of noodling which goes absolutely nowhere. So it’s the three unreleased live tracks that are aimed at drawing in the punters. Thankfully they’re quite good. You’re getting ‘Strange Kind of Woman’, ‘The Mule’ and ‘Hell to Pay’ all recorded live in Gaevle, Sweden on August 10, 2013 during the ‘Now What?!’ world tour and the version of ‘The Mule’ almost makes it worth the price of admission.

However if you’re swithering over the latest Deep Purple releases just stick to the “Infinite” album, a good if not great release.

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KING KING
(She Don’t) Gimme No Lovin’
Manhaton

They may be having their troubles what with the tour being postponed due to more vocal ails but their latest single sees King King moving further into the world of classic rock and away from their blues rock origins.

This is the kind of thing early Thunder, eighties Bad Company and vintage Whitesnake would have happily put their name to as the band crash through an invigorating slab of classic rock and roll. If the album comes anywhere close then this could turn out to be one of the highlights of the year.

Fingers crossed that they can get Alan Nimmo sorted as it was only back in 2016 that he had his last lot of vocal chord surgery. With a rest on the cards and the tour pushed back to January next year here’s hoping the alnum and the band can push on to the next level.

The video is at the bottom of the page.

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OTHER VIEW
When Daylight Is Gone
Reclab

To Italy now for some power metal.

It’s their second album following on from “Going Nowhere” and the band reckon it has a deeper, darker, heavier instrumental contribution than it’s predecessor. I don’t know about that but they’ve certainly got all the moves down pat in their chosen style. So that’s heavy guitars, keyboard flourishes, melodic vocals and a few odd time signatures. So a job well done.

In fact at times they seem to be yearning to turn into a full blown prog metal band, especially on the likes of ‘The City of Amber’ and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s where their future turns out to lie. But they can still rock like bastards as they do on ‘Carnivore’ and the whole album lends itself to an enjoyable metal listening experience. If you want to pick one tune before making your mind up then go for the epic sounding ‘When The Night Comes’ where they throw everything including an actual kitchen sink into the mix. But it works magnificently.

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