CINDERELLA — Long Cold Winter (review)

CINDERELLA — Long Cold Winter album cover Album · 1988 · Glam Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
siLLy puPPy
Although CINDERELLA were as glam as you can get on their debut album “Night Songs” they wasted no time steering their image and sound away from trashy kitsch glam metal into bluesy hard rock arenas. While the debut sounded more like Brian Johnson led AC/DC, here the sound is more akin to 70s hard rock following the melodic paths of Aerosmith, Bad Company, Humble Pie and more. A risky move for a band to follow up a successful debut with a purposeful new sound, however CINDERELLA struck gold again with LONG COLD WINTER by scoring three top 40 hits and delivering another triple platinum album all with the help of MTV.

The album begins with an acoustic slide guitar intro but then heads into their hard rockin’ blues with “Bad Seamstress Blues / Fallin’ Apart At The Seams” which is followed by the lead single “Gypsy Road” another hard bluesy rocker. The strangest sounding song is the next one “Don’t Know What You Got (Til It’s Gone)” which was the band’s biggest hit. This is a strange Elton John meets AC/DC moment because it’s a piano ballad which incorporates Tom Keifer’s AC/DC vocals. It’s kind of an amusing little number. The rest of the tracks deliver the same catchy hard rockin’ blues style with absolutely no surprises in the mix.

This is a play-it-safe album by all means. It sounds like they were going for the jugular on the pop charts crafting tracks that were guaranteed to have you singing along (and then being frustrated if you can’t screech that way!) The album does seem a little hard-rock-by-the-numbers, but i have to admit that i find the tracks catchy and i really love the slide guitar and the delivery of how it’s all mixed. I do find this a step down from “Night Songs” which had an exotic metal sound to the mix, but LONG COLD WINTER still delivers ten strong catchy tracks that deliver in the melodic hard rock department.
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