Deep Purple Announced for Wacken Open Air 2013

Though the world is still mourning the death of Jon Lord, the music continues to live on with the current lineup of Deep Purple. While it’s been since 2005 since we’ve had a new record, there is some good news for the band and their future.

Hennemusic reports that having recently wrapped the 2012 edition of Germany’s Wacken Open Air festival, organizers revealed that the 2013 festival is already in the planning stages with Deep Purple among the first acts to sign on for next year’s event. This would mark the band’s first appearance on the hard rock festival, which has grown in popularity over the last few years.

Meanwhile, it looks like the band might have some new music to promote when the festival rolls around again. Guitarist Steve Morse recently told Glide magazine, “We’re producing an album with Bob Ezrin, who’s done KISS, Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel, Alice Cooper, and he also worked on the last Kansas album, when I was with Kansas. So he’s one of my favorite producers and that’s going to be our studio album. It’s probably going to be more of an extravaganza.”

The group is currently in Nashville working on the release, but a firm release date has not been announced. Morse said of the disc, “Everybody realizes we’re not going to do this forever, so to me it feels like this is a really important album to do well.”