The DVD shows us the last concert of Deep Purple in their legendary Mark II line-up on their 1993 world tour captured in the UK at the NEC, Birmingham, during their 25th anniversary tour in November 1993. The oft reconfigured band hit the stage in their historical best line-up as we have come to know, comprising of Ian Gillan (vocals), Ritchie Blackmore (guitars), Jon Lord (keyboards), Ian Paice (drums) and Roger Glover (bass). Instrumentally, Deep Purple has never sounded better than this and believe me this DVD of their concert is a thrill to watch.

This concert filmed and has 16 tracks covering Purple’s classics, along with material from the then current “The Battle Rages On” album.

We've got the top favorites from Highway Star as the opener, then Black Night, Perfect Strangers followed Child in Time, and Woman from Tokyo, Smoke on the Water. The greatest interaction with the public are done in Smoke on the Water and Black Night, but all setlist long, they play and entertain people like few others can. Purple are masters in that.

Also included are interviews with Gillan, Paice, Lord and Glover (Blackmore is, as ever, absent from the interviews – and in fact didn’t bother completing this tour).The extras consist of biographies, interviews and details of the various band line-ups as Deep Purple has gone through. There are also interviews between the tracks in the main feature and I would have preferred that they were all put together into one long documentary, rather than spread out all over the place and break the concert playlist.

The picture quality is very good, and far better than many other live concerts I’ve seen on DVD. There’s no dirt on the print, and the image is detailed and blemish free which means that the folks at BMG have done some painstakingly hard work in cleaning up the original recording to get this perfect picture.

From a technical standpoint, the audio on the disc is superb. Thunderous and powerful, the track has a wide frequency response and adds quite a bit of punch to the mix, especially in the 5.1 channel and Dolby Digital spectrum.

Rating: *****

Reviewed by Verus Ferreira