DEEP PURPLE Is Already Talking About Making Another Studio Album In 2027: 'If You Have Ideas, Making A Record's Easy'

In a new interview with the Rockonteurs podcast, DEEP PURPLE drummer Ian Paice spoke about the band's upcoming album, "Splat!", which will arrive on July 3 via earMUSIC. It is the band's sixth collaboration with producer Bob Ezrin, who has helmed every DEEP PURPLE album since 2013's "Now What?!". After podcast co-host Gary Kemp read a quote from Ezrin in which the legendary producer expressed his hope to continue working with DEEP PURPLE for "a very long time", Paice said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Well, that's already being discussed for... This [2026] is a heavy touring year — it's almost 100 shows or something — so next year [2027] won't be the same. You can't keep doing it that way. So if you have any ideas, making a record's easy. If you don't have ideas, making a record's impossible. So getting together, and if we find we have some ideas we all like, there's no reason why we shouldn't put together another record sometime next year. It's the nature of things. It's all about ideas. You can be an actor, but if the guy hasn't written a screenplay, you've got nothing to say."

Asked how the members of DEEP PURPLE go about writing music nowadays, Paice said: "Everybody comes in with a couple of basic notions of something that they probably woke up in the middle of the night and said, 'Oh, that sounds good.' And one person will start something. Now, if it's interesting, the other guys will join in. If it's not interesting, there's a deathly silence and somebody else starts something. The amazing thing with the whole process is you go in in the morning and you've got nothing, and you come out after five, six hours' work and you got two or three really nice somethings. And that's what keeps it working for the next day. 'Okay, that was a really good day.' But you don't get three good ideas every day. The first day, all these things you've had loitering in your mind, they come to the fore. So next day, there aren't that many ideas, so it becomes a little more difficult as you go through. But after 10 days, you've probably got a lot more than you can put on an album in the way of ideas, but you gotta then separate the wheat from the chaff."

Asked if DEEP PURPLE records all writing sessions as they happen, Paice said: "Oh, yeah, you capture everything. 'Cause you may only play something once as a jam, and it's gone. So if you've caught it and say, 'Well, there was something good five minutes ago,' and then you take that and you see if you can go further with it. And so it's that process of trial and error.

"When you start something, everything you do is the best thing that's ever been written, 'cause you're all excited about it," Paice explained. "The next day you go, 'What a piece of crap.' But it's always been that way. We never had one dedicated songwriter. So it becomes out of the influence of the five people. Initially the four, because Ian's [Gillan, PURPLE singer] there noting all the atmosphere and what the emotions of it are."

"Splat!" has been described in a press release as "the heaviest DEEP PURPLE album in many years".

DEEP PURPLE has released two singles so far from "Splat!", "Diablo" and "Arrogant Boy". On "Diablo", DEEP PURPLE is joined by a special guest, global superstar and Grammy-winning guitarist, singer and songwriter Keith Urban on second guitar.

"Splat!" has already received enthusiastic first fan and media reactions, with early press praising the album's DEEP PURPLE spirit. Uncut calls "Splat!" "distilled, high-octane PURPLE at its finest". Classic Rock praises the album for delivering "everything that makes DEEP PURPLE one of the greatest acts in hard rock."

DEEP PURPLE recently kicked off a major run of European summer dates, starting in Finland, followed by shows in Norway, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and Italy before the "Splat!" world tour heads to North America. The touring schedule includes 86 shows across 28 countries.

"Splat!" is available for pre-order in multiple formats including CD, vinyl, and limited editions. Further exclusive fan items are only available on the official "Splat!" shop.

With more than 120 million albums sold since forming in 1968, DEEP PURPLE have long secured their place in rock history. Rather than simply preserving their legacy, they continue to extend it, driven by the same spirit that defined their earliest work.

At the heart of "Splat!" is an idea conceived by Gillan. Rather than treating the end as destruction, the album imagines it as transformation: "Splat!" explores the end of humanity not in any crude apocalyptic sense but as a metamorphosis beyond physical existence.

Photo credit: Olaf Heine (courtesy of The Outside Organisation)