I believe most longtime WS fans will dismiss this album as an unfortunate last gasp at recapturing the former Snake glory. If that's all they're looking for, they'd be right. But there's far more to this final(?) Whitesnake release that deserves mention and even a little praise. First of all, I'll get the bad stuff out of the way. Coverdale is clearly in his weakest voice, not quite hitting those high ones anymore, and having to augment the backing vox with female singers (which is, actually, not bad-sounding at all...). Some screams have been replaced with melodramatic whispering, others simply displaying a very aged voice no longer in top form. Adrian Vandenberg, who wrote and played brilliantly on this effort, is recorded on (what sounds like) a single track, pushed way off to the right in the mix, and has no fullness or bombast. Pity. While this intimacy level works well on the slower bluesy numbers, it makes the full-on rock songs sound thin and amateur. Lastly, Coverdale's lyrical content is sadly still relying on cliche, double-entendre, and effortless rhyming. Here is a man who probably has some of the best stories to tell in all of rock, and instead gives us the same silly "heart/apart", "mine/time", "I'm drunk again and I lost my woman" lyrics. Did the alternative music revolution do NOTHING to inspire this man to begin telling his life stories with finesse and zeal? All that notwithstanding, this would make a fairly interesting Coverdale/Vandenberg solo record, and should have been titled as such. Coverdale's baritone is still the coolest thing to hear, and as mentioned earlier, Vandenberg shines. I admire that Coverdale & Co. stuck to their guns an put out a quasi-blues rock album instead of more L.A.-style hair metal, but the talent displayed here had SO much more to offer. But.....if you feel Coverdale is Shakespeare and can do no wrong, you'll love it. The rest of us are just left wanting more......

I've been waiting for this to come! It's like "candy to my ears" to hear Coverdale really sing the way only he can. The first track Don't Fade Away is a majestic melodic rock-blues-ballad that truly shows his powerful, at the same time sensitive, voice. A truly great opening. All In The Name of Love, with great guitarwork from Adrian Vandenberg, has a lot of Hendrix-spirit in it. In all, this album has everything that the other late Whitesnake albums were lacking; strong melodies, superb singing. It really seems honest. Tomas Lange

David's vocals are very strong.After being in the band for almost 15 years we finally get to hear how Adrian Vandenberg sounds on album.HE SOUNDS GREAT! They do everything from the "Trouble" type sound to the "Slip of the tongue" sound.(The Zeppish sounding ones,not the bad pop-metal ones)I listen to this CD frequently+never get tired of it.Fans of any Whitesnake era will enjoy this CD.

Ah, Restless Heart, the forgotten Whitesnake album. Released in 1997, almost a decade after the previous Whitesnake album (1989's

), Restless Heart was essentially a David Coverdale solo album written in collaboration with guitarist Adrian Vandenberg. It certainly has more in common with Coverdale's other solo album (

) than with the average Whitesnake release.

Restless Heart is not a typical Whitesnake album, but it's definitely a good one. This is basically a laid-back and very soulful mix of blues melodic rock. Obviously, Coverdale is no stranger to the blues rock sound, but it's cool to hear him in this mellower setting. The album has a few rocking moments, but it's the slower, more soulful songs that really shine, thanks to a combination of Vandenberg's sweet melodies and Coverdale's deep, world-weary vocals.

It's always the last album that comes to mind when you think of Whitesnake, but Restless Heart is still a very strong melodic/blues rock album that just about any David Coverdale fan should own. If you're looking for the harder-rocking Whitesnake sound though, you may want to skip this one.

Well, after getting the excellent "Good To Be Bad" this year, I got inspired to catch up on the Coverdale/Whitesnake albums I neglected and finally got this and Coverdale's "Into The Light".

The cover of this CD is credited to "David Coverdale & Whitesnake" and as another reviewer noted, it seems apparent that it was intended as a solo CD but maybe the record company was trying to cash in on the Whitesnake name (but, then, why not release it in America?). It doesn't really follow the shredding hair-metal style of late-80's Whitesnake, nor the crooning blues-based hard rock of earlier Whitesnake so much as the softer rock of his two late-70's solo albums - except, where his earlier solo work was infused with the funk and soul sounds of it's time, this one has more of the blues and white R&B soft-rock stylings of the late 90's, with a few Zeppelin-y touches (Coverdale's previous album was, after all, a collaboration with Jimmy Page). There are a few good rockers (I especially like "Crying", which has a middle section reminiscent of the one in "Still of the Night", and the slide-guitar infused "Woman Trouble Blues"), but they make up only about a third of the album.

Coverdale no longer has the beautiful crooning voice of the late 70's/early 80's (when I think he had one of the best voices in rock), but his singing here is closer to that than the screaming of his "hair-metal" era. The guitarist/co-songwriter on this is Adrian Vandenberg, who toured 2 albums and co-wrote the "Slip Of The Tongue" album, yet didn't appear on previous Whitesnake recordings (except one guitar solo). His playing is in a tasteful blues-rock style, rather than the shredding late 80's metal one might expect. There's no second guitarist, and (although there's a keyboard player in the credits) not much keys to be heard, which also makes it sound a bit different from Whitesnake.

All in all, this won't satisfy those looking for the metal side of Whitesnake, but should please Coverdale's fans who weren't happy with the hair-metal era of the band, while his solo album "Into The Light" has more in the vein of early Whitesnake.