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› Whitesnake – Good To Be Bad
Out Now (See the Competitions Page)
For what must surely be the swansong of legendary Yorkshireman David Coverdale and Whitesnake, ‘Good To Be Bad’ takes things way back to the early 80’s before he got into lace and perms and all that gay nonsense. What we have here is classic cuts of the early Whitesnake sound, with very obvious veins of Deep Purple’s ‘Burn’ era running through it as well.
Whitesnake is seen as something of a dad-rock band, but the headlining slot at Wacken 2006 surely proved otherwise, with 40,000 metalheads rocking out to some of rock’s most memorable (if slightly embarrassing) anthems. That’s precisely what Whitesnake is, so when the album opens up with ‘Best Years’, no one is that surprised. It’s a catchy upbeat rocker, and straight away it’s apparent this is a vintage record. There is no Americanised riffing or drowning reverb, it’s mean and dirty blues guitars all the way through this album. The ballads of course are there, in the form of ‘All I Want All I Need’, and the album closer ‘Til The End Of Time’, but thanks to the invention of iTunes are very skippable, as the magic in this album lies in the aggresive blues groove that runs through the entire record. Jumping back to stadium anthems, the stupid ‘Lay Down Your Love’ will have raised hands, bangin’ heads and fraudulent air guitars all round, while the title track will make you grin like an idiot. The blues influences of old come out fairly strong here, with ‘A Fool In Love’ being particular smooth.
All in all, it’s a strong finish to what most people assume is the end of David Coverdale’s career, along with blistering performances from old hands Reb Beach and Doug Aldrich. The only criticism of the album I really have is that it covers the same ground for an hour, but seeing as Dave has got away with it for the last 35 years, you can’t really blame him that much.
7/10
Alex
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