Logo
DiS Needs You: Save our site »
  • Logo_home2
  • Records
  • In Depth
  • In Photos
  • Blog
  • Podcast
  • Search
  • Community
  • Records
  • In Depth
  • Blog
  • Community

THIS SITE HAS BEEN ARCHIVED AND CLOSED.

Please join the conversation over on our new forums »

If you really want to read this, try using The Internet Archive.

Deep Purple

Rapture of the Deep

Label: Edel UK Records Release Date: 24/10/2005

lanky by Nick Lancaster. November 4th, 2005

Deep Purple in the twenty-first century are very much like Pierce Brosnan's James Bond - a suave, charming and elegant composite of the best bits; recalling and updating past glories without breaking into a sweat, never really pushing the boundaries but being interesting enough to justify a new release every couple of years. And there's no invisible cars or over-long action sequences to ruin this one.

Rapture of the Deep was written and recorded in five weeks, and it shows. The band have reverted a bit too happily to formula, most notably with the token (abeit quite pretty) jangly-guitarred ballad 'Clearly Quite Absurd' and a handful of generic, dull-chorused hard rockers. It's all pure Purple, of course, marked out by bluesy riffs, prominent keyboards and the unmistakable vocals of Mr Ian Gillan, and none of it's actively bad, but it doesn't rival the band's best work and too often sinks into a morass of blandness. Occasional highlights (the end of 'Back to Back' in particular) seem like desperately improvised attempts to fill time without obviously re-using material, tank chase in Goldeneye stylee.

Nevertheless, there are a few attempts to do something a bit more complex and they are, on the whole, successful. The utterly adorable title track has a delicious Asian flavour reminiscent of the band's mid-eighties albums (which, to continue the Bond analogy, is like revisiting... oh no, let's not go there), and the closing 'Before Time Began' starts life as a melancholic paean to more innocent times before rocking out in true Purple style. Lyrically both yearn for something fresher and more substantial, although how that squares with making an album of sonic wallpaper is anyone's guess.

  • 5
    Nick Lancaster.'s Score
Log-in to rate this record out of 10
Share on
   
Love DiS? Become a Patron of the site here »


LATEST


  • Why Music Journalism Matters in 2024


  • Drowned in Sound is back!


  • Drowned in Sound's 21 Favourite Albums of the Year: 2020


  • Drowned in Sound to return as a weekly newsletter


  • Lykke Li's Sadness Is A Blessing


  • Glastonbury 2019 preview playlist + ten alternative must sees



Left-arrow

Oceansize

Everyone Into Position

Mobback
11637
11640

Animal Collective

Feels

Mobforward
Right-arrow


LATEST

    news


    Why Music Journalism Matters in 2024

  • 106145
  • news


    Drowned in Sound is back!

  • 106143

    news


    Drowned in Sound's 21 Favourite Albums of the Y...

  • 106141
  • news


    Drowned in Sound to return as a weekly newsletter

  • 106139

    Playlist


    Lykke Li's Sadness Is A Blessing

  • 106138
  • Festival Preview


    Glastonbury 2019 preview playlist + ten alterna...

  • 106137

    Interview


    A Different Kind Of Weird: dEUS on The Ideal Crash

  • 106136
  • Festival Review


    Way Out East: DiS Does Sharpe Festival 2019

  • 106135
MORE


    news


    The Neptune Music Prize 2016 - Vote Now

  • 103918
  • Takeover


    The Winner Takes It All

  • 50972

    Takeover


    10 Things To Not Expect Your Record Producer To...

  • 93724
  • review


    The Mars Volta - Deloused In The Comatorium

  • 4317

    review


    Sonic Youth - Nurse

  • 6044
  • feature


    New Emo Goth Danger? My Chemical Romance confro...

  • 89578

    feature


    DiS meets Justice

  • 27270
  • news


    Our Independent music filled alternative to New...

  • 104374
MORE

Drowned in Sound
  • DROWNED IN SOUND
  • HOME
  • SITE MAP
  • NEWS
  • IN DEPTH
  • IN PHOTOS
  • RECORDS
  • RECOMMENDED RECORDS
  • ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
  • FESTIVAL COVERAGE
  • COMMUNITY
  • MUSIC FORUM
  • SOCIAL BOARD
  • REPORT ERRORS
  • CONTACT US
  • JOIN OUR MAILING LIST
  • FOLLOW DiS
  • GOOGLE+
  • FACEBOOK
  • TWITTER
  • SHUFFLER
  • TUMBLR
  • YOUTUBE
  • RSS FEED
  • RSS EMAIL SUBSCRIBE
  • MISC
  • TERM OF USE
  • PRIVACY
  • ADVERTISING
  • OUR WIKIPEDIA
© 2000-2025 DROWNED IN SOUND