Fans of 80's rock can tell you that the genre has a distinctive feel and sound replete with what is now considered cliches not just in the big hair and tight pants but also in the vocals and instrumental stylings which define the genre and make it distinctive to listeners over the years. This album by Gary Moore is very representative of the time although representing a more toned-down commercial version unlike the harder and personally for me more preferable side of the genre ala Metallica, Megadeth and especially Iron Maiden and is much more like a Poison or Warrant or dare I say it, Judas Priest type album.

Although Gary sings throughout I think it's clear that he's a much better guitarist; his vocals can be described as adequate and in no way falls in the same league as say Coverdale or Dickenson or even Ben Johnson of AC/DC and so the real strength of the album lies in the guitar work for the songs which are all written by Gary except for the strongest tracks "Military Man" and the bonus track which is the best track on this cd "Still In Love With You" which were written by his great pal and the bass player from his former band Thin Lizzy, Phil Lynott which has excellent guitar solos full of feeling and incredible phrasing and I think is Gary's best ever overall solo showing that you don't need to play fast all the time to be good. The solos are so good that even the greatest ever slow guitar soloist, David Gilmour, of Pink Floyd would have been proud. "Once In a Lifetime" is the commercial Top-40 type hit which is a great pop number complete with synthsiser although the guitar solo is a real killer and I'm going to learn it note for note when I get the time. It reminds me a lot of a Starship from "Knee Deep In the Hoopla" kinda tune. "All Messed Up" though has great slide guitar work and helps to reinforce the fact that Gary is a complete guitarist.

Overall, the content is consistently strong from start to finish and represents the best songwriting and is a great leap in that department when compared with say "Corridors of Power". Other than the one already mentioned i.e. the cd's best track, the other bonus tracks: "Stop Messin' Around (Live)" gives us a hint of Gary's artistic leanings for the future (blues) and "Murder In the Skies (Live)" are nice as they show us a glimpse of what Gary sounds like live. Content-wise this is a great effort and is clearly Gary's best pre-Blues era solo album.

Too bad this mlps (mini-lp replica sleeve)version is so poor though. It is made from very poor thin quality cardboard and assembled poorly so that it looks like it will come apart once the glue gets old. By the way, if you want to know what very well designed mlps albums look like try the Queen or The Band series which are simply works of art. The inner sleeve though is decent and a fold out with all the lyrics in both English and Japanese is also included in addition to a fold out poster of Gary holding his white Hamer Gibson-clone two humbucker, whammy bar with Floyd Rose bridge set up.

The biggest disappointment though is the poor sound quality which incredibly has been advertised as being a 2002 Remaster. Either the master tapes have deteriorated so badly, they lied or the engineer totally screwed up because the sound quality is poor. The sound is muddy and it sounded like listening to an old cassette tape in which the oxide is falling off the tape so that it sounds loud and decent a few seconds before sounding the total opposite the next few seconds, suddenly loud and clear and then just as suddenly soft and muddy. In fact the bonus tracks sound a lot better and that they may even actually have been remastered and thankfully Gary Moore's greatest ever track "Still In Love With You" actually is the best quality sounding track on this cd at least if you are looking for some kinda silver lining around this massive cloud.

I recommend you give this very expensive mlps version of Gary's album a wide berth until they come up with a much better sounding (truly) remastered version so that you can justify the value for money especially given these days when every cent counts although "Still In Love With You" is so good, it almost makes up for the entire value of this package.