Purpendicular
Venus to Volcanus

I think Purplendicular would be a better name for this band that spends their days as a Deep Purple cover band, but at times they want to do their “own” thing. This their second album of songs they have written themselves and one of them is co-written with Deep purple’s Ian Paice and Rainbow’s Tony Carey. Their second album called Venus to Volcanus has eleven tracks and they all sounds a lot like Deep Purple, hence the “own” as they songs could just as well had been some obscure Deep Purple B-sides. The creativity does not impress, that much is certain.

Creativity isn’t what I come to think of when I listen to this band, had I not read the press sheet I would have kept believing this was Deep Purple covers, they are that devoid of imagination. The production feels less fresh and punchy than many of the albums that are being released these days, kind of like something from a decade or so ago. Decent vocals, but a rather typical rock vocalist – there is really nothing that stands out as creative about this album. It feels like something covered in a layer of dust and mould and you have to brush all that away to really get to the songs.

When the dust is brushed away I think that this is a pretty good album, the songs are pretty strong and the purple tint doesn’t detract too much from that fact. The opening track called The Bullet and the fifth track called Wonderful are the best but the quality of the songs are pretty even so these tracks don’t stand out too much. The thing is though that it is an album I grow tired of quite fast and I can’t really think of these guys as artist because there are no art in painting by numbers or copying someone else’s music. And copying is what they do; changing the words in old songs don’t make them new. Novelty is what is really missing from this album.

An album coloured deeply purple and lacking novelty but the old farts that like bands like Deep Purple will really like this album, personally I think that it is okay but not really that interesting in the end. Purplendicular has put together a decent album but hardly one that will go down in history, lets just say that it is pretty good but the lack of imagination makes me grow tired of it pretty fast.

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