With Abandon, Deep Purple sound closer to the hard-riffing blues-rock of their classic 1970 release In Rock than to any other of their albums. Nevertheless, an attempt has been made to update that sound for the 1990s. Mostly, this is due to guitarist Steve Morse, formerly of the Dixie Dregs, who replaced Ritchie Blackmore and first featured on Purpendicular. He has a style common to most second-generation hard rock guitarists--bitingly tight and aggressive, but lacking character or originality and little of Blackmore's soulfulness. Considering that four-fifths of this band are the same as on the classic Machine Head the songwriting is lazy, with very little structure to the tunes, nearly all of which fade out gradually on a tide of relatively aimless jamming rather than coming to a definite end. The most obvious exception to this is "Fingers To The Bone", which is mostly keyboard-dominated and works well by comparison. This is not a disastrous album, but one that will only be appreciated by committed fans. Look elsewhere for prime Deep Purple. --James Swift
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