Band:	Deep Purple
Album:	Come Taste The Band
Style:	Hard rock, Heavy metal
Release date:	1975
Guest review by:	AndMetalForAll

01. Comin' Home
02. Lady Luck
03. Gettin' Tighter
04. Dealer
05. I Need Love
06. Drifter
07. Love Child
08. This Time Around / Owed To 'G'
09. You Keep On Moving

Come Taste The Band is an album from a completely different Deep Purple without Ritchie Blackmore in the lead of the band. After Ritchie left to form Rainbow most of the fans thought it would be the end of the band, without the "genius leader" but thanks to David Coverdale that asked Jon Lord to continue with the activity of the band, Tommy Bolin was called to perform the lead guitars...the result is a solid record. Although being a great show of strength by the group, this is by far one of the most underrated albums of all time, not only of Deep Purple's history but in rock history.

Amazing resiliency by one of the most iconic bands in the history of rock, this album showed that Deep Purple could continue without Blackmore and make really good music. Technically it's really great, most of the riffs and solos are not perfect but are really great to hear, it's hard-rock all the way, solid performance by Bolin. Ian Paice and Lord stayed on the top of their game giving excellent performances. Lyrically, Coverdale gave his personal touch and some tracks talk about love, failed romances or love related type of tracks, like "Lady Luck" or "I Need Love". The band made an excellent combination combining hard-rock and love related songs without being to soft and maintaining the rock style as a priority.

David Coverdale's voice is perfect, I'm not a big fan of Coverdale but in this one I have to confess that his performance was off the chart. All the tracks have great melody and rhythm, cool guitar performance, solid keyboard, great drum parts and outstanding bass. Not only does Coverdale sing but also Hughes and Bolin lent their voices to some of the songs of the album. Another great feature is that the album is short in time, it is only almost 40 minutes. Some songs that have too much duration become boring, that doesn't happen in this album. The band had the ability to keep things animated in the entire album with great performances, solos, riffs, drum and bass parts, mixing romantic and melodic styles with hard-rock in every song, containing the right Deep Purple elements.

Come Taste The Band is in my opinion, a collector's item. It's not a masterpiece, far from that, but a solid album without Blackmore, Glover and Ian Gillan. Mk IV kept the band's personality. Like I said above, it's one of the most underrated albums in rock history, it's a real shame that a good quality album like this is marginalized and put aside nowadays.