10 Most Underrated Metal Albums
9. Come Taste the Band - Deep Purple
The classic lineup of Deep Purple was being held together by string and duct tape by the time they got around to Come Taste The Band. While the Mach III lineup with David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes worked like a charm on albums like Burn, not many were willing to listen to a Purple album without the impressive guitar skills of Ritchie Blackmore. So how to do you live up to your own legendary status? Simple: you don't.
For most of its runtime, Come Taste the Band is a practical reconfiguration of the traditional Purple sound, with songs that are far more indebted to the funk styles of rock coming out at the time. Considering Blackmore was one of the main draws of the group in the early days, Jon Lord does an impressive job at showing his stuff on this outing, with a vast assortment of keyboard sounds on display.
On the other hand, the arrival of Tommy Bolin remains one of the most underrated lineup changes that ever happened to the group. Though Bolin didn't have the classical finesse of his predecessor, the way he locked in with the rest of the group on these songs proved to be at least a step in the right direction. With Purple eventually calling it quits after this album and Bolin dying of an overdose soon after, this is the only salvo we have of seeing what this iteration of Purple could have been like.