Gig review: Deep Purple at First Direct Arena, Leeds

"This one's deep and meaningful," Deep Purple frontman Ian Gillan tells Leeds's First Direct Arena, as drummer Ian Paice grins behind his kit. The two exchange a glance, before the former adds a knowing caveat: "And mercifully short."

He's not wrong to clarify brevity: at this much-delayed stop in West Yorkshire, their performance is as much a world-class exercise in wig-out noodling as anything else.

There is little disputing the indelible mark the veteran group have left upon hard rock and heavy metal, even if their line-up has been reshuffled more times than England's top-order batting partnership.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees have sold over 100 million albums worldwide, influenced everyone from Carlos Santana to The Flaming Lips, and technically birthed two popular spin-off groups in their own right, Whitesnake and Rainbow. (Frontman Gillan's self-titled solo band, not so much.)

The band entered their Mk IX guise earlier this year with guitarist Steve Morse's departure to care for his wife, bringing touring member Simon McBride into the fold permanently. But it is their most celebrated Mk II era they lean on across a 95-minute show, the period where Gillan was joined by founders Paice and Jon Lord, alongside Ritchie Blackmore and Roger Glover.

Three remain, with Blackmore long since departed; Don Airey, with the band since 2002, channels the late Lord with the sort of prog-loving keyboard solo that drove punk up the wall.

Those gratuitously impressive displays of technical virtuosity are a recurring fixture throughout the night. Though almost half of the tracks wheeled out come from 1972's seminal Machine Head – energetically fired into with Highway Star's full-throttle ballast – extended instrumental spots seem to dominate proceedings.

Long-time fans will know this is nothing new, but newer – or cannier – punters may wonder if it is to help carry Gillan; at 77, he cuts a weathered figure, without his signature shriek, but still on song for a bluesy harmonica burst here and there.

Latter-day material from the post-millennium is greeted politely, and the band are shrewd enough to dispatch such songs early doors. Crowd reaction reaches natural fever-pitch with the psych-bent Space Truckin' and stadium anthem Smoke on the Water, the latter still a copper-bottomed monster 50 years down the line.

They close up with Hush, arguably their finest pop-crossover moment, and the propulsive bounce of Black Night – split, of course, by another solo. Some things never change.