Whitesnake are back after more than a decade with a new studio album, a fact that kept the fans of the absolute hard rock band waiting and talking about for months. After their successful shows and an amazing release of “Live In the Still Of The Night” back in 2006, David Coverdale and Whitesnake of 2008 proudly announce that some times… it is good to be bad.

To begin with, we ought to mention that in “Good To Be Bad” David Coverdale is accompanied by Doug Aldrich and Reb Beach on guitars, Uriah Duffy on bass, Chris Frazier on drums and Timothy Drury on keyboards. This is Whitesnake of 2008 and they are not less energetic than the previous line-ups, as the band has been through quite a few line-up changes and all members were great musicians.

“Good To Be Bad” consists of 11 tracks, 3 of which are ballads, and all of them are simply typical Whitesnake songs. The album follows the steps of “1987” and “Slip Of The Tongue” and the bluesy mood that Coverdale has always been keen on. Heavy riffs rising through a heavy production is the good “card” of the album, even though some listeners may find a little bit tiring. Coverdale follows the good old “recipe”, which in no way delivers something similar to “Slide It In” or “1987” or “Slip Of The Tongue”, however he knocks over the present situation that forces everybody to modernize and follow the trends. Lyrically also Coverdale sticks to his all time favorite subjects: eternal love for a woman, confidence, passion but also unfulfilled or love that hurts and leads to loneliness… To be honest, “Good To Be Bad” has its weak moments too: some mediocre compositions with weak choruses, average vocals on some parts – everybody can understand why, and keyboards almost non-existent. However, experienced Coverdale sure knows how to bring out the good parts of the album especially since he contributes to the production along with Michael McIntyre and Doug Aldrich. One of the highlights of the album is the Led Zeppelin – like “Lay Down Your Love”, which is also the first single of the album.

I presume that fans will split in two fields: a) those who are happy to listen to a hard rock album like “Good To Be Bad” in the year 2008 that comes from a band that was absent from discography 11 years now (and for those who don’t consider “Restless Heart” as a clearly Whitesnake release, the years of absence were more) and b) those who would simply expect something much better. I personally track myself somewhere in the middle, only a little closer to the first one since I really had a good time when I listened to this album. After all, Whitesnake are back and they have nothing to prove, to anyone!