Well, first you have a four octave vocal assault, given by no other than the legendary Ian Gillan, also known as Jesus Christ (Superstar, of course.) His amazing banshee wails have been known to Disturb the Priest, every now and then. I can't emphasize how great Ian Gillan is, you have to hear this album to truly understand. Combine Ian Gillan's mastery at hard rock vocals with Ritchie Blackmore, and you have a winning team. Ritchie Blackmore is a truly great guitar player. He gives us fantastic riff after riff, and his solos are even more amazing. He is deeply rooted in classical music, and it gives a fresh perspective compared to the blues style many bands played at the time (and hey, I love Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, but variety is good). Add Tony Iommi into the mix with these four greats, and you have my five favourite guitarists outside of prog. We cannot forget Jon Lord, the organ player. "Organ player!?" some might exclaim. But believe me, he is fantastic. He really knows what he is doing. Without him, Ritchie's guitar riffs wouldn't sound half the same. What a lot of people don't realize is that when Jon Lord is riffing with his Hammond Organ, it sounds similar to a guitar. This in turn creates a huge massive sound, which would become a trademark of the band (well, sometimes Jon played piano and stuff, but that wasn't particularly often). I could compare Jon Lord to some other organ players, maybe Keith Emerson or Rick Wakeman, but his style is far different from these geniuses. He himself is also one!
We cannot forget the rhythm section, however. They are very impressive themselves. The two of them are Ian Paice (drums) and Roger Glover (bass). I'll start with Little Ian first (Gillan was called Big Ian, and Paice wasn't really small or anything, but Gillan was pretty big). Ian Paice, in short, just has the groove. His drum beats are great. He can play speedy beats with ease, bashing his drum set, but at the same time keeping his "groove." He plays amazingly throughout the album, and is often underrated when people talk about drummers. Granted, I prefer John Bonham (Led Zeppelin) over him, but he beats out his other competitors at the time such as Bill Ward (Black Sabbath). Then again there is Keith Moon, who is fantastic, but I would still put Ian Paice on the same level as him. I just mentioned these drummers because they were all in Hard Rock bands that had overflowing influence on the genres of Hard Rock and Heavy Metal.
Now on to Roger Glover, who is very important in the history of Deep Purple, despite getting the job in Deep Purple by coming along with Ian Gillan when he was about to join Purple. Roger Glover is a great bassist, and was the co-writer of the lyrics along with Ian Gillan. You can hear his thundering bass amidst all the guitar and organ action from Ritchie and Jon. Admittedly, his bass was not as loud as Geezer Butler, but it is still loud and great. He works great alongside of Ian Paice, which is very important for the rhythm section. Someone has to keep the rhythm while Jon and Ritchie are trading off solos (which happens frequently)! We cannot forget the fact that he does the remixing and a lot of the work on the Anniversary Editions of the Mark II (which is this line-up) albums. Before I go on, I should also mention that I will be reviewing the 25th Anniversary Edition of "In Rock". The normal version is great too, but the extra songs you get are a superb addition, and the intro to Speed King isn't cut off. Plus, the 25th version is remastered, which is very noticeable. I have both versions, and the sound quality is vastly improved on the remastered version. "Into the Fire" is barely listenable on the non remastered version! The remastered version is an import though, but it is only about five dollars more if you order it. In Germany you can get it in any well-ordered cd shop for the price of around 8 dollars/euros. From: https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=9120
