I've been living with these songs for a few months now, thanks to that nasty, nasty Internet, but I really wanted to have the finished product in front of me before putting pen to paper. You see it's hard for me being a Whitesnake fan. They were the first band I regarded as mine, back when I was teenager, and the musical markers that would define me for life were falling into place.

As the grey whiskers will attest, it was the Whitesnake of Lovehunter and Bobby 'Blue' Bland covers that grabbed hold of my heart. To this day, I will happily start a fight if anyone disputes Come An' Get It as one of the greatest albums ever.

The late 80's weren't particularly happy times for me, though, as I saw my band turning into another big-haired MTV band. Sure, they still managed a few good tunes, but the nadir of Slip Of The Tongue still pains me. Even worse, I made the mistake of going to see the touring band that had Warren DeMartini of Ratt on guitar. That still causes me to wake up screaming in the middle of the night.

Sir David of Coverdale redeemed himself completely in my eyes with his solo album Into The Light, which remains ludicrously underappreciated. Add in a healthy batch of excellent live shows, awful solo spots aside, and Whitesnake was firmly back in my good graces.

But a new studio album?

The good news is that it is far, far better than I could have hoped for, something I didn't think was going to happen twenty minutes into the album because Sir David had gone out of his way to try and please everyone. This means the first half of the album is chock full of the glossy American rock that made him his millions, and saw an entire generation of young boys drool into their TVs as Tawny Kitaen draped herself over the bonnet of a car.

Musically, though, that doesn't really rock my boat, despite the pleasure of hearing that voice, albeit with more gravel than in days of yore, draped over a set of new songs. Once you get past the title track, you hit the mother lode. Time for the track by track:

"Best Years" is an odd choice to open the album. It's a mid tempo rocker that would have fitted happily on to Slide It In, with some fine keyboards. "Can You Hear The Wind Blow" is much better, as the guitars bite hard in finest 1987 style. "Call On Me" sees Sir David indulge in some fine clichés as the band revisits the high sheen glossy metal of the MTV years.

"All I Want, All I Need" is a big radio friendly ballad, with a guitar sound that will really upset John Sykes! It is this album's "Is This Love." Next up is the title track and, for me, the weakest song here. It's the one place where Coverdale seems to forget he can't hit the big notes anymore, and the whole song is just — to use a technical term — screechy.