The House of Blue Light is an illustration of a band in rapid decline as the old animosities that broke up the band in the 1970's were clearly coming back into play again. I've heard this album described as the Fireball of the 1980's, which isn't a bad comparison. Both albums followed more harmonious releases and both were the first to show the virtually inherent instability of any band featuring Ritchie Blackmore and Ian Gillan.
The album is undeniably the most "eighties" the band got, with lots of synthesizers and slick drums. Like all of the Blackmore reunion-era albums, it starts with a Jon Lord classical-inspired intro. Gillan's voice is struggling mightily and I have to admit that his post-1982 vocals are a bit of an acquired taste for the casual fan, though his lyrics are often clever (how "Mitzi Dupree" even got past Blackmore's objections is a minor miracle). In spite of some good moments, overall there is a sense of malaise all over this album. The band would attempt to "cure" the problem by sacking Ian Gillan, a decision quickly reversed after one controversial album. After one more acrimonious album, the Blackmore era came to a crashing end with the guitarist permanently severing his ties with the band.
This album used to be a little hard to find since nobody was craving 1987-era music in the mid-1990's when I was first getting into Deep Purple, so I picked mine up secondhand. One of the nice perks of the early CD releases is that most of the songs are "extended" to take advantage of the extra running time of a CD compared to a single vinyl record. The extensions aren't essential (it's pretty clear on most where the song was probably supposed to end), but I also haven't had much motivation to "upgrade" my copy because that would involve the truncated versions.
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