Stephen
Blue Murder brought back the superior work of John Sykes after his time with Coverdale in Whitesnake flew away. Teaming up with Carmine Appice and Tony Franklin, I surely don’t have any doubt behind the musicianship of the band, and another thing that struck my nerve is how great Sykes’ voice is. The soul, the character, the emotion, he got em all in one piece, and much better than what I expect at first listen. When everything almost sounded perfect, what makes this album a bit let down for me is the unbalanced songwriting and many tracks are left with holes that supposed to be filled with something huge. Musically, Blue Murder mixed up the bluesy part of Whitesnake with a slight commercial feel of "1987", and I can also sense a trace of darker edge here and there.
Take a look at those three starting tunes, “Riot” and “Sex Child” are completely decent to my ears. Some good solos I must admit, but nothing’s really spectacular. That also goes for the next song, “Valley of The Kings”, half of it is awesome, but the other half sounded weak. The balladic “Jelly Roll” is my first fave track from this album, and “Out of Love” is even better. This song could have been a Whitesnake hit, such a great composition and a stunning vocal delivery. The title track and “Black Hearted Woman” have a strong heavy metal element and the latter is another fave of mine. “Billy” is a fun track with some punchy chorus, “Ptolemy” sounded like a musical exploration of the band, the skill is admirable, but as a song, unfortunately it kinda bores me.
If you like Whitesnake's "1987", some part of you might like this, but I think you tend to agree with me that the songwriting still have a lot of room of improvement. If only several songs are much better, I guess this one can be a blast, but with many 5 stars around for this quality, that’s just way too overrated.