After many years of lineup changes, reunions, breakups, and albums that ranged from redundant to embarrassing, 'Splat!' proves that Deep Purple still knows how to sound like a real band – and not just a veteran brand rolling along on inertia.

This is not an album trying to forcefully recreate its peak days, but one that clearly understands what actually works for them.

Heads of state are people with agendas where every second is calculated.

For this reason, it is possible that the Prime Minister of Japan, Sanae Takaichi, has not yet managed to clear an hour from her schedule to properly listen to 'Splat!', the album that Deep Purple released this past weekend.

However, about two months ago, she did manage to fulfill an old dream when she found a few minutes to take a picture with Ian Paice – the legendary drummer of the veteran British hard rock band and the only member who has survived all its many incarnations – when the band landed in the Land of the Rising Sun as part of its current tour.

Deep Purple performed in Japan for the first time fifty-four years ago.

One can marvel at the results of that visit time and again when listening to 'Made in Japan', the double live album that documented the concerts the band held at Festival Hall in Osaka and the legendary Nippon Budokan arena in the capital, Tokyo.

Takaichi was about eleven years old when Paice and his four bandmates at the time – vocalist Ian Gillan, bassist Roger Glover, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, and keyboardist Jon Lord – delivered the performance of their lives there.

'Made in Japan', which became one of the greatest live albums of all time, more or less signed off on the band's golden age.

What has happened to Deep Purple since could fill more than one book.

In fact, several books have already been written about the band that started as a huge promise and managed to fulfill it, but shortly thereafter became – and very quickly – not only a pale shadow of itself, but almost a parody of the kind that inspired the cult film 'Spinal Tap'.

For too many years, Deep Purple mainly resembled a train station: vocalists came and went, musicians swapped, and internal ego battles repeatedly took their toll.

The band has reunited, broken up, and reunited so many times that even a veteran fan like Takaichi probably stopped following her teenage love at some point.

In recent years, although the band has undergone a few more personnel changes, something has finally stabilized in the veteran lineup.

On stage – as anyone who has attended at least one of the band's visits to Israel could observe – Gillan has struggled to replicate his peaks from the early seventies.

Fortunately, the group of musicians surrounding him reminded us just how magnetic the sound of the great Deep Purple remains: the meaty drums of Paice, the embracing bass of Glover, the twisting Paganini-style solos that Blackmore wrote and were subsequently performed by Steve Morse and his successor Simon McBride, and the legendary Hammond organ of Lord, now handled by Don Airey.

Unlike the stage – where the band focused mainly on trying to maintain the old materials in a stable state – in their recent studio albums, Deep Purple sought to show that with all due respect to the glory of the past, this is a group that also cares about continuing to create.

Such ambitions are not necessarily backed by good albums, but with Purple – at least since veteran producer Bob Ezrin entered the picture – the result has usually been better than expected.

This is also the case throughout quite a few moments on 'Splat!'.

The Canadian-Jewish producer – who has worked in the past with Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel, and the band Kiss – has managed to turn Deep Purple from a living-dead legend into a band that continues to look forward.

On one hand, he took care to preserve the heavy sound identified with the group, including the dynamic Hammond organ that cannot be mistaken; on the other hand, he ensured that it would not sound like a band performing pale covers of the younger version of itself.

This is exactly what one gets from 'Arrogant Boy', the song that opens the new album.

This is a tight, short, and rhythmic version that presents a successful coordination between the band's players: Paice, who always sounds precise, is excellent here, as is veteran bassist Glover, guitarist McBride, and keyboardist Airey.

No one expects 'Arrogant Boy' to compete with the band's classics, or for Gillan to present the octaves and intensities that characterized him in the seventies (and which he has not been able to approach for years), but the song definitely does the job.

Although it deals with a rebellious youth named Billy who seeks to challenge the existing order, it sounds so Deep-Purple-esque that no one should be bothered by the fact that the musicians performing it are already in their seventies and eighties.

'Diablo', which comes immediately afterward, also presents a convincing combination between the rhythm section and the Hammond, which shares short solo parts with the guitar.

Gillan – who also does not soar here or go into particularly challenging performances – still manages to rise slightly in tone toward the end of the song.

'Guilt Trippin'' , which awaits in the second half of the album, is another beautiful moment thanks to an almost classical piano movement, which constitutes a complementary mirror image to the power that Glover and Paice produce from their instruments.

In 'Third Call', which arrives toward the end of the album, there is another great guitar solo that functions as a kind of short intro to the few but excellent seconds that each musician receives later – a bit like a mini-performance of the band, reminiscent of its great days in the past.

Throughout the listening experience, the conclusion sharpens: 'Splat!' is turning out to be the best album of late-era Deep Purple.

While this is not a masterpiece like 'Deep Purple In Rock' or 'Machine Head' from the early seventies, it is also not a resounding failure like unnecessary, soulless past albums, such as 'The House of Blue Light' or the terrible 'Slaves and Masters' with vocalist Joe Lynn Turner.

Precisely in its late incarnation, Deep Purple has managed to do the almost impossible: to give some of its veteran audience – those who did not choose to disconnect from it decades ago – a few more good reasons to also be interested in what is happening with it today.

The reason 'Splat!' is the best and most enjoyable album the Purples have released in many years is that all its participants understood in advance what was expected of them.

The stabilization of the lines in the lineup keeps it in focus, and instead of focusing on what its members are no longer able or need to do (Gillan's falsetto singing and writing and performing songs of seven-eight minutes or more), they were wise to focus only on what still works: good dynamics between skilled musicians, operating according to an updated organizational code that has not forgotten its core values.

After many long and difficult years, it appears – and also sounds – that Deep Purple has found its comfort zone; it sounds like a real band again, and not just another sticker product that has nothing behind it except a high-profile name.

In this case, age probably did its part – but this time for the better.