Machine Head by Deep Purple

Machine Head, Deep Purple's sixth studio album, came out on Purple Records in 1972, and it's the Mark II lineup at full, face-melting throttle: Ritchie Blackmore on guitar, Ian Gillan on lead vocals, Roger Glover on bass, Jon Lord on keyboards and organ, and Ian Paice on drums. It was their third studio album together, and they produced it themselves.

The making of it became a legend of its own. Tired of squeezing sessions between gigs, the band decamped to Montreux, Switzerland, in December 1971 with the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, planning to record in the town's casino and chase the sound of their live shows. Then, at a Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention gig right before the sessions, someone in the crowd fired a flare gun into the ceiling and the casino burned down. A week of scrambling followed, including a try at a nearby theatre that got shut down over noise complaints, before they turned the Grand Hotel, empty for the winter, into a makeshift studio. The whole mess became "Smoke on the Water", built on a riff so simple and so heavy it sounds like it was carved out of granite.

The rest is just as loud. "Highway Star" is a speed-crazed road-burner, all screaming guitar and organ, "Lazy" swings on a jazzy, boogie-woogie organ lope, and "Space Truckin'" rumbles like a freight train headed for orbit. It became the band's biggest seller, topping the charts in the UK and several other countries, and it is regarded as a cornerstone in the building of heavy metal.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.