The second single from the album “SPLAT!” - “Diablo” - appeared without any announcement on streaming platforms on the night of Corpus Christi, so I simply slept through its premiere while camping in a tent during a kayaking trip. It was only on Sunday, June 7 at 8:00 PM that the “obligatory” music video was released, continuing the series of clips showing the band performing live in the studio.
Visually, the faster editing and dominant red color scheme make a much better impression on me than “Arrogant Boy.” Unfortunately, musically, “Diablo” as a whole feels less convincing.
On my favourite Deep Purple forum, I came across a comment that captures the core issue quite well: the track sounds like a bunch of disjointed parts edited together in Pro Tool even though some of the parts are quite nice.
In a way, “Diablo” is condensed late-era Deep Purple—something we have already heard several times in a similar form. You can hear echoes of tracks like “Après Vous,” “One Night in Vegas,” or “Body Line.” It is not even about borrowing or similarities—those are natural for a band with such a long history—but rather whether the band is still capable of surprising the listener with something?
While “Arrogant Boy” had a lot going on instrumentally, here we get a rather familiar riff and a vocal line that fortunately rescues an otherwise fairly conservative instrumental layer. The most interesting element seems to be the chorus—although it is hard to call it a chorus, as it appears again (echoing “Arrogant Boy”) and, unfortunately, only once.
Next comes the obligatory instrumental section—a trade-off between Don Airey and Simon McBride—a device the band has used many times before. Here, however, it adds little to the track and, given the total running time of just over three minutes, actually takes up valuable space. After that, another verse and riff return, and the track ends.
It seems the instrumentalists have come to treat solo trade-off as the essence of the Deep Purple style. Such moments did occur (for example in “Speed King”), but contrary to appearances they were not that frequent, and more importantly, there was a clear musical integration between them. Here, everyone seems to be playing their own part without much regard for what came before—something that is even more noticeable in the Airey–McBride pairing—so individual sequences could be removed without much loss to the whole.
Additionally, the track features a guest appearance by Keith Urban, a popular country artist in the US (in a broad sense of the genre), privately known as Nicole Kidman’s husband. He bought the studio in Nashville where Deep Purple record and is friends with Simon McBride, which likely explains his involvement.
His playing is perfectly solid, but the arrangement of solo section (keyboards–guitar–guitar–keyboards, followed by a full-band unison) makes it difficult to distinguish his contribution from the rest of the instrumental clutter.
Ian Gillan delivers a stronger vocal performance than on the previous album. At 81, he is in very good form—or perhaps more accurately, his parts are now more consciously tailored to his current vocal range. He sings with commitment and his trademark “Gillanisms,” such as the phrase “in the lower depths of hell.”
That said, the growing tendency toward a kind of melodic recitation is noticeable; it can be effective, but not everyone will appreciate it. In his parts, I also hear subtle echoes of “Are You Sure” from the Gillan album “Glory Road.” In fact, it is Gillan who ultimately lifts this track one step —the rest remains competent but predictable.
I hope that the announced return to a 1970s vibe will not primarily mean this kind of instrumental conservatism. Regardless of how one evaluates Steve Morse contribution —whether he fit the band or not—he was able to push Deep Purple from time to time into less obvious directions, which for me often produced the most interesting results.
As with many later Deep Purple albums produced by Bob Ezrin, we are dealing here with a kind of stylistic “menu,” where everyone can find something for themselves to like. “Diablo” belongs to that category of tracks that almost always appear on their albums in a similar form—appealing to some listeners and leaving others unconvinced. I personally remain rather skeptical about this direction.
From a producer’s perspective, however, one should probably focus first on the quality of the composition and only then on shortening it to avoid dullness. Here, I get the impression that the priority was the latter.
Another point is that, when it comes to the new Deep Purple album, we already know its two shortest tracks. So in this department it can be only better from now on…
For the first time in Deep Purple’s history, the singles released so far are simply the first and second tracks on the album. I am not sure whether this reflects a new marketing trend adapted to the streaming era, but the same release pattern can be observed with upcoming albums by The Rolling Stones and Europe.
