Deep Purple’s ‘Splat!’ single adds two unreleased Montreux cuts to the album closer

Deep Purple have turned “Splat!”, the closing title track of their current studio album SPLAT!, into a three-track single with an official video, and the two extra tracks are the part fans have not heard. Both are previously unreleased live recordings from the band’s Montreux Jazz Festival show: “Scriblin’ Gib’rish”, a song from the album, and “Guinnesis”, whose studio version is otherwise available only in the SPLAT! box set.

“Splat!” is the fourth song from the record to be released on its own, after “Arrogant Boy”, “Diablo” and “Guilt Trippin’”, but the first to arrive after the album was already out. That changes what the single is for. It is no longer a preview. It is a second push for a record that the band and their label, earMUSIC, call the heaviest Deep Purple album in many years, timed to the European arena leg of the tour that is taking those songs on stage.

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The title track is also where the album’s idea lands. SPLAT! is built on a concept from singer Ian Gillan: the end of humanity imagined not as destruction but as transformation, a metamorphosis beyond physical existence. As the 13th and final song, “Splat!” closes that arc, and at three minutes and 39 seconds it matches the album version, so the single is the studio take, not a radio edit or a remix.

Producer Bob Ezrin has now made six Deep Purple albums in a row, every one since 2013’s Now What?!. The current five-piece, Gillan, Roger Glover, Ian Paice, Don Airey and Simon McBride, recorded SPLAT! playing together in the studio, the way the band has always worked. Gillan has said the new material can stand next to “Highway Star”, “Smoke on the Water” and “Lazy”, the songs from the band’s run between 1969 and 1973. According to earMUSIC, the four studio albums before this one all reached number one in more than one country.

For anyone who already owns SPLAT!, the digital single adds two live tracks and nothing new from the studio. The physical formats show where the label is aiming: a CD digisleeve maxi-single limited to 3,000 copies and a 12-inch crystal-clear vinyl pressing at 180 grams and 45rpm, limited to 2,500 copies, both carrying the Montreux recordings. That is a collector’s product, and it asks the most loyal buyers to pay again for a song they have in exchange for two performances. “Guinnesis” makes the point twice over, since its studio version sits behind the price of the box set.

The video, which had passed 180,000 views on the earMUSIC YouTube channel a week after it went up, premiered on 22 October, and the single reached all streaming and download services on 23 October, almost four months after SPLAT! came out on 3 July 2026. The two live tracks were captured at Montreux on 13 July 2026. Both limited physical editions are available to pre-order now.

The SPLAT! World Tour runs to 86 shows in 28 countries on three continents, and after the current European dates it ends in South America in December. Whether “Splat!” earns a permanent place next to the songs Gillan measures it against will be decided there, on stage, one night at a time.

Tags: rock, hard rock, Deep Purple, Ian Gillan, earMUSIC, Montreux Jazz Festival

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