I’m opening this thread to gather our reviews of Deep Purple’s 2026 tour.
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Here I am with a mini-report of the DP concert in Este, Italy.
I have to say that I didn’t feel all the emotion I thought I’d experience during the concert, and that’s what I regretted the most.
Maybe it’s because the argument with my wife in the morning and the angry trip there threatened to ruin (and perhaps did a little) what was for me a special event. Maybe it’s because the acoustics in the castle aren’t comparable to those of a sports arena. Maybe it’s because the seating keeps the audience calm. Maybe it’s because I self-inflicted spoilers with set lists and YouTube videos. I hope I’ll be more involved in the October concert at the Assago Forum!
Deep Purple still sounds good, very tight, a great sound.
When the “Space Truckin’” riff started, luckily the audience all stood up and ran to the front rows—it was about time!
I think I was one of the few who waited for the new songs rather than the old ones.
Paicey’s kick drum live is absolutely heavy metal; “In Your Face” is something I never understood so much of a difference from the studio albums.
Don is omnipresent, his usual train of notes in his solos, with the wine glass gag and a hint of “O Sole Mio.”
Simon gave a good performance; the first part of his solo was bluesy, certainly not impressive, but then when he shifted gears he received applause.
LittleIan was clearly a bit tired and snorting at the end of “ST.” God bless him!
BigIan, I’d say, gave a good performance.
He’s definitely crazy to play all these concerts on this long tour!
He did well on the new songs, and did well on the encores where he still had the voice.
HS did well, he’s been singing like this for 10 years now.
“Hard Lovin’ Man” and “Into the Fire” struggle so much here, they’re two songs that should be cut from the set immediately.
He also struggled on “Space Truckin’,” less than on the other “historic” songs.
I’d also cut this one from the set, especially since five “machine head” songs are too many.
Anyway, I’m amazed at how he balances his voice song by song, verse by verse, chorus by chorus, and how at times his voice is still absolutely focused and ringing.
Even though he’s lost a lot of his high notes, sometimes, depending on the combination of lyrics and notes, he had truly surprising waves of power even in the highest tones of the old songs!
On WABMC, a great performance, sends shivers down my spine!
I hadn’t seen Purple live since 2013, and little has changed, for better or worse.
Now I’ve dutifully filled this huge gap.
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setlist nothing new compared to recent dates:
Highway Star
A Bit on the Side
Hard Lovin’ Man
Into the Fire
Guitar Solo
Arrogant Boy
Lazy Sod
Lazy
When a Blind Man Cries
Diablo
Keyboard Solo
Scriblin’ Gib’rish
Space Truckin’
Smoke on the Water
Encore:
Guinnesis (instrumental)
Hush
Black Night
I leave you a mix of parts of new songs that I recorded briefly (I carefully avoided recording the old songs that are always found on YouTube)
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Sitting down at a rock concert—especially a Deep Purple one — is a massive pain in the ass. That’s one reason why I won’t be going.
Una grande rottura di coglioni 
Interesting!
How did the metal riff go down live? 
I was in Munich and have to say that the sound IMHO was better than in Olympiahalle. The audience went wild from the very beginning and the band paid back. The new songs work live better then on CD ;-); I found them real hard and heavy. Looking forward for London.
Munich papers also liked the concert, for instance AZ (Moses Matthias Wolff ):
"Deep Purple: Magical timelessness on the Tollwood Deep Purple make you forget in the sold-out music arena on the Tollwood that the band was founded in 1968. To kick things off, “The Planets” by Gustav Holst run to a small video animation, a coherent intro after which the musicians calmly enter the podium and play “Highway Star”, the song that is one of the most important pioneers of heavy metal and was once described by bassist Roger Glover as the “final Deep Purple song”. He wears a black tank top, sunglasses and a blue headscarf while smiling mischievously into his gray beard all evening. Singer Ian Gillian concentrates on his voice, which he masters at the age of almost 81 as he did in the early years, after he replaced Rod Evans one year after the band formed in 1969.
But the real frontman is drummer Ian Paice, founding member and world drummer, who really has every beat and who radiates the most reliable coolness in the universe, and has been for over half a century. Each band member has his own area of responsibility, plays a certain character, like in a comic series, where the fans know from the outset who has which characteristics. For example, the deeply relaxed singer, whose T-shirt motif is a kind of collage of a stylized cyborg face consisting of a red eye like the Terminator, gears, machine parts and a kind of fountain pen collection that protrudes from the head like a Swiss Army knife, stays in the background during vocal breaks, but always unpacks the blues harp at the right moment.
Jon Lord’s successor, Don Alrey, a master of Hammond organ and keyboards, who has been in office since 2002, who traditionally has a glass of red wine served to him during one of his longer solos, while he places a small weight on the keyboard so that the long-lasting sound produced by it allows him to enjoy a deep sip. Before the concert, a meeting with Pete York His hairstyle seems a bit aunt-like, his posture slightly odd, which underlines the virtuosity of his skills, because it often seems as if the inputs for his skilful gimmicks come spontaneously, even when he tinkers “In München steht ein Hofbräuhaus” into his motley potpourri and thus animates the audience to sing along. In hardly any other rock group does the organ play such a superior role as in Deep Purple.
Ian Paice leans on his arm with relish when he has a short break. Before the concert began, he met for lunch with his old friend, the Spencer Davis Group and Helge Schneider drum master Pete York and his wife Mecky in the Bayerischer Hof and thus worked strengthened on the cymbals and the skins of his drums, his long white hair tied back in a small braid and the sunglasses stylishly on his face, as if he had been born with her. After numerous fast-paced numbers like “Into the Fire”, quieter and sentimental pieces like “When a Blind Man Cries” are also presented and provide pleasant feelings in the chest of the audience. There is little gimmickry, a bit of colorful fog from time to time or small changes in light, but the focus is on the effect and development of the sounds.
Guitar player Simon McBride, the youngest band member, masters his instrument magnificently, even if his guitar doesn’t quite come close to the sound of Ritchie Blackmore’s Fender devices. But that doesn’t matter at all, on the contrary, a little musical and colorful variety is quite good for a historically manifested rock group, because it is not a nostalgia show, but a magical moment of timelessness: especially towards the end of the evening, when they perform their world hit “Smoke on the Water” as a cultural fossil, those simple, yet so memorable and condensed sounds that wrote music history and which, along with “Stairway to Heaven”, every guitar student masters at some point.
And as the successor to a myth like Blackmore, there is a lot to offer – and it does. The lyrical and musical range of this group is so versatile and has repeatedly set an example over the decades that it is simply great fun to be able to experience this uniqueness in rich sound quality and charismatic performance."
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I don’t understand the meaning of your question.
the guitar sound was solid and powerful, the riffs are exactly as they should be…riffs!
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Thanks redwhite for the article by Matthias Wolff!
really well written and with interesting anecdotes from the visits of Pete York and Helge Schneider
Ian Paice is in great shape, and Roger is a figure on stage who exudes incredible rock charisma, as if to say “guys, don’t worry, I’m here on stage keeping the pace, and things will go well, enjoy the show you deserve.”
Roger’s solidity, presence, style and precision cannot be celebrated enough!
In this article by Matthias Wolff, I was struck by a term that well defines the Deep Purple of 2026 and their music: “TIMELESSNESS”
never was a term more appropriate!