Deep Purple-Whoosh! (2020)

Released in the bleak year of 2020, a year as depressing as it was disastrous due to the global pandemic that ravaged the world, Deep Purple released their twenty-first album. This album moves between nods to their past hard rock with progressive undertones and the conventional, modern hard rock of their recent work. Gillan, Morse, Airey, Paice, and Glover deliver an album that somehow encapsulates Deep Purple's glory days. Besides demonstrating why the band's music remained relevant that year, they didn't try to relive their past glories or rest on their laurels. An album featuring standout tracks like "Throw My Bones", with Morse's immeasurable guitar riffs and Paice's driving drum rhythm, the bluesy "We're All The Same in the Dark", the brilliant melody of "Nothing at All", the seventies-inspired hard rock of "No Need to Shout" and "The Long Way Round", the semi-progressive "Man Alive", and the gothic "Step by Step". With this album, Deep Purple proved to the world that they remained one of the most iconic bands in the history of rock music.