You forgot the rule of going out when Anton signals he wants to take a leak, you then have to rush!
Oh boy, you’re right!
But do I have to list all that again??
- taking care of the most beautiful and intelligent dog in the universe - Anton Verndal
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Alright, here’s mine
S Tier (Beyond Reproach, Nearly Flawless) - Purpendicular, In Rock
A Tier (Great Works and/or Essential Listening)- Machine Head, Burn, Rapture of the Deep, Now What?!, Splat!, Perfect Strangers
B Tier (Good, Strong Records)- Fireball, Who Do We Think We Are, Stormbringer, Come Taste the Band, Bananas, Abandon, =1
C Tier (Half Decent Records)- Infinite, Whoosh!, Shades of Deep Purple, Deep Purple, Book of Talieysen
D Tier (Very Bad Records with a few great tracks that can’t save the Train Wreck)- House of Blue Light, The Battle Rages On
F Tier (Not Worth Your Time Unless You’re a Die-hard Fan) - Turning to Crime
X Tier (Beyond Irredeemable and Utterly Blasphemous Shit that does not deserve to bear the Sacred Name of Deep Purple) - Slaves and Masters (with the exception of the Hammond solo in Fire in the Basement which is one of Jon’s best and the album’s only saving grace) *
*I will admit to listening to this album as a guilty pleasure in the same way that watching terrible B Movies is fun. Slaves and Masters is utter trash, it’s the Zardoz of the Purple Catalogue, but even I love being a masochist and torturing myself sometimes.
Enough with the indirect remarks, Mike.
Can you please tell us how you really feel about this album? 
(PS. I take it you are not a fan of Sean Connery’s red Zardoz “outfit” either? 
)
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I agree with the sentiment. Slaves and Masters is a guilty pleasure album. But as I’ve said, it is more fruitful to listen to it as the next Rainbow rather than Deep Purple album. Considering the train wreck The Battle Rages On became (in life, if not in music), it would have even been interesting to see that album completed with JLT. 
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Re: Sean’s Zardoz outfit - I like my men in speedos, but not quite like that…
Congratulations!
You just won the “Ian Gillan Lyric Contest” challenge!
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So I actually listened to TBRO for the first time in a while, and I think I’ve actually been a bit unfair to it. While it does not have the same drive as the older Mk 2 material, it’s actually a pretty good record. There are a few stinkers - Ramshackle Man, A Time to Kill and One Man’s Meat, which is possibly the worst album closer I can think of (it should have been Solitaire, what a track!) - it’s actually a pretty good record overall.
I think if I had to re-rate it, it firmly belongs in C Tier, just after Infinite.
Here’s a slightly revised list, albums are listed in each tier from top to bottom for that tier
S Tier (Beyond Reproach, Nearly Flawless) - Purpendicular, In Rock
A Tier (Great Works and/or Essential Listening)- Machine Head, Burn, Rapture of the Deep, Now What?!, Perfect Strangers, Splat!
B Tier (Good, Strong Records)- Fireball, Who Do We Think We Are, Stormbringer, Bananas, =1, Abandon
C Tier (Half Decent Records)- Infinite, The Battle Rages On, Come Taste The Band, Whoosh!, Deep Purple, Book of Talieysen, Shades of Deep Purple
D Tier (Very Bad Records with a few great tracks that can’t save the Train Wreck)- House of Blue Light
F Tier (Not Worth Your Time Unless You’re a Die-hard Fan) - Turning to Crime
X Tier (Beyond Irredeemable and Utterly Blasphemous Shit that does not deserve to bear the Sacred Name of Deep Purple) - Slaves and Masters
I thought I’d throw my own list into the discussion.
This is obviously not meant as an objective ranking of the “best” Deep Purple albums. It’s simply the way I personally hear them, and as a big Blackmore fan that probably influences the list quite a bit.
For me, the top tier is pretty clear:
1. In Rock
Still probably the album that defines what Deep Purple were to me. It has the rawness, the danger, the incredible interplay between everyone and, of course, Ritchie at his most explosive. It still sounds like a band discovering what they could actually do.
2. Machine Head
I don’t think much needs to be said here. The songs are incredible, the performances are incredible and the whole album just has that very special Purple chemistry. It is one of those records where I can put it on from beginning to end and hardly ever feel the need to skip anything.
3. Burn
For me, this is one of the great Purple albums even though it is obviously a very different beast from In Rock or Machine Head. I love the energy of the Mk III line-up, and Ritchie’s playing is absolutely fantastic. Glenn and David changed the character of the band, but in a way that produced something really special.
4. Perfect Strangers
A fantastic comeback album. I love the atmosphere, the production, the songwriting and especially the feeling of the original Mk II chemistry coming back after all those years. It doesn’t sound like Machine Head 2, and that is probably a good thing.
5. Slaves And Masters
This one will probably be controversial here, but I really like it. I know Joe Lynn Turner is not everybody’s favourite Purple singer, but I think this album has a very strong identity of its own. It has great songs, Ritchie sounds fantastic and the whole thing has a slightly different melodic character that I really enjoy.
Then comes a rather big gap for me.
6. Now What?!
For me, this is easily the best of the more recent Purple albums. I still remember hearing it and thinking: “Wow, they’ve actually made a really strong album here.” There are very few songs I don’t like. Maybe “Blood From A Stone” never really did much for me, but overall I think Now What?! has a lot of variety and personality.
It also feels like a proper album to me. I can put it on and listen through the whole thing, rather than just picking out two or three good tracks.
After that, things become much more difficult for me.
There are good songs on Infinite, Whoosh!, =1 and the newer material, but I don’t find myself wanting to listen to those albums from beginning to end very often. There are always individual songs that I really like – for example Birds of Prey from Infinite – but as complete albums they don’t grab me in the same way.
The same goes for Perpendicular. There are tracks I really enjoy, and songs like “Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming” and “Ted the Mechanic” have a lot going for them, Abandon for example is absolutely unlistenable for me. But somehow I never connected with the albums as a whole in the way I did with In Rock, Machine Head, Burn or Perfect Strangers.
And yes, I know I’m probably showing my age and my Blackmore bias here, but I rarely listen to the very early Rod Evans albums.
That doesn’t mean I dislike them. There are individual tracks I really like – “Help!”, “April”, “Wring That Neck” and several others. But as albums, that early psychedelic/rock version of Purple simply isn’t my main thing.
For me, Deep Purple really became Deep Purple with the Mk II era.
So if I had to reduce my list to the albums I would grab first when I really want to listen to Purple, it would probably be:
In Rock
Machine Head
Burn
Perfect Strangers
Slaves And Masters
Now What?!
Those are the records I return to most often.
And perhaps the biggest difference between my list and what some other fans might post is that I’m not necessarily looking for the most historically important album. I’m looking for the one that still makes me want to put it on from beginning to end.
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I don’t feel able to compare albums from so many different years. Every era has its own line-up, band members, circumstances, cultural backgrounds and contexts. What has always fascinated me about Deep Purple is that, over all these many, many years, I’ve been able to enjoy (almost) all their albums, despite the band and I having been in completely different worlds and life situations.
I have great respect for the fact that, at their age, they’re still making music that so many people want to listen to.
What I can do:
If I were to rank the albums from the Morse era by how often I’ve listened to them (all of which I listened to when they were released), it would look like this.
PURPENDICULAR
NOW WHAT
INFINITE
RAPTURE OF THE DEEP (new 2025 mix)
WHOOSH
BANANAS
RAPTURE OF THE DEEP (old mix)
ABANDON
(TURNING TO CRIME - for me, this isn’t a regular studio album.)
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This is a fun, formidable and futile task!
Today’s ranking, best to worst, goes like this:
- In Rock
- Machine Head
- Burn
- Fireball
- Perfect Strangers
- Purpendicular
- Who Do We Think We Are
- Stormbringer
- Now What?!
- Come Taste the Band
- Splat!
- House of Blue Light
- Infinite
- Whoosh!
- Rapture of the Deep
- The Battle Rages On
- Deep Purple
- Bananas
- =1
- The Book of Taliesyn
- Shades of Deep Purple
- Turning to Crime
- Abandon
- Slaves and Masters
I would say the top ten is rather consistent, and S&M will always end up at the bottom. The hardest thing, for me at least, is to rank the Mk I albums.
While I have my favorite albums, and favorite line ups, there is no album that I wish undone. For me, the beauty of DP is the great variety/diversity in their history. That really makes them stand out from everything else. I rarely get bored by DP - yes, individual albums tend to be overplayed occasionally, but then I can simply shift to another era, another style and sound etc.
Listening to DP (and other bands in the family tree) has been a great education for me. It has been the gateway into many other styles of music that I have come to love, like classical music and jazz. I am very grateful for that!
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It is difficult to rank albums given such a long and varied discography. For me, the best material—taking into account the distinct qualities of each record—spans from *In Rock* to *Bananas*. Naturally, I’m not counting *S&M*. The one thing I am certain of is that I want “Perfect Strangers” song played at my funeral, though I don’t know whom to tell about this wish.
However my favourite are Splat!, Perfect Strangers, Fireball and Who Do We
With Morse I love Abandon and Bananas, a little further down Purpendicular. I’ve blocked out the rest.
In case undesirable people show up uninvited, I want Magma’s “Mëkanïk Dëstruktïẁ Kömmandöh” to be played on mine.
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- Fireball
- Who do we think we are
- Purpendicular
- In Rock
- Come taste the band
- Bananas
- Abandon
- Machine Head
- Burn
- Splat
This is my order, and my preference of listening when i am in the mood for…
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I wrote it some time ago on THS, now I’m writing it on the forum too:
these are my masterpieces:
In Rock
Perfect Strangers
Abandon
Splat!
If I had to add other albums,
I would add Burn and Come taste the Band.
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I posted mine on amd-p, but it was so long ago that I can’t remember what the hell I wrote. However, I do remember we were able to do a lot more quarrel over a lot less records
Updated to now, it would be:
- Burn
- In Rock
- Machine Head
- Perfect Strangers
- Purpendicular (Jon: “For Christ’s sake guys, it’s a MATCH!”)
Honorary mentions:
- Come Taste the Band
- Splat!
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This has become a wonderful thread, thanks everybody!
There’s a backstory to it, too. I started this exercise when I was stranded in a cafe because I forgot my keys at home and had to wait for two hours to get my spare key. So naturally I started the most fun and futile exercise of them all, ranking my favourite band’s albums. It looks like many of you agree with me (and as was equally expected, many don’t) - the thing that strikes me from reading this thread over, is how Abandon seems to divide opinion now, almost thirty years later, as it did when it came out. (I remember a poll on #deeppurple on IRCNet from 1998, where Purpendicular (or _|_) beat Abandon (/-\) with a ratio of 3:1 or something like that.)
Even though it is my first “new” Deep Purple album, and therefore a source of permanent nostalgia, there are more measurable qualities to that record that are unique in their catalogue.
One of them is that I think Abandon is probably their heaviest album. It was made at the exact juncture Deep Purple ceased to be a “heavy” band in any meaningful way, and became “(hard) rock legends” instead. No matter what the boys say, in the 1980’s they were seen as a heavy metal band (in 1984, for example, rock journalist Lee Martyn wrote an article about DP with an iconic final line “AC/DC watch out, the heaviest of the heavies are back!”). And while THOBL and S&M are “lighter” albums, on TBRO you can hear what they mean. Purpendicular was a breaking point in their career and musically, it went pretty much everywhere. Abandon has more focus - and the chosen focus is being a heavy rock band. Now as someone who came in as a kid who loved loud guitar music of yesteryear, Abandon delivered exactly that. With age, it also delivered nuance that practically all the other groups of that ilk did not - and definitely not in 1998.
On a very important tangent, the biggest crime against culture that is currently happening is that Abandon and Bananas are nowhere to be found on streaming services!
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zenos, I agree with what you say about Abandon, in some ways it has similarities with Splat!, for me they are absolutely positive similarities, for others negative.
I don’t understand why people who like Splat might not like Abandon, but maybe I’m the only one who sees the similarity between these two albums.
As for TBRO at the time in the midst of the thrash metal heyday of bands like Metallica, Megadeth, Testament, Anthrax, or others like Manowar, super-heavy Judas, AC/DC, Gun’s and Aerosmith coming off the successes of the 1990s, realistically I think TBTO didn’t impress any young metalheads.
My friends were basically indifferent to Deep Purple, considering them soft dinosaurs.
Even though the 1993 tour in Italy was sold out, I was one of the few minors at the Palatrussardi, there was a generational divide that Purple had the merit of mending with hundreds of concerts in subsequent tours.
and then when metal started to go into crisis around 2010 onwards suddenly all the historical bands went from the status of “dinosaurs” to the status of “legends”.
bands like Saxon, Doro and many others after years of oblivion (years where Purple worked incessantly on stage!) have returned to fashion, metalheads had grown up and were rediscovering bands that they considered “too little heavy”
My problem with Abandon is there are too many slow to mid tempo songs in a row - take the first three tracks for instance - with similar grooves. It’s heavy as fuck, don’t get me wrong - Seventh Heaven is a metal tune, I don’t care what anyone says - but my problem is there’s not enough faster tunes and not enough variety. I find it drags and plods a bit too much because slower to mid tempo tunes are so highly favored on that record.
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