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Whitesnake sits in old skin with same ’80s power jams

The long-forgotten band Whitesnake has recently been resurrected, and they’re ready to rock like it’s 1989. The band’s latest album, Good to Be Bad, carries the same powerhouse guitar riffs and banal lyrics that brought hair-rock to the top of the charts two decades ago.

In their 30-year career, Whitesnake has shed an unprecedented amount of band members — 29 to be exact — leaving lead singer David Coverdale as the band’s sole survivor.

Coverdale’s latest roundup of all-new band members offers the same signature sound and long locks, but this time without the teased perm.

Perhaps the fresh meat has served as a fountain of youth for the band, as each hard-rock track radiates with a fist-pumping energy that is reminiscent of their stadium-stomping glory days. The opening track, “The Best Years of Our Lives,” presents the gritty combination of a fast tempo snare against the thick set of layered electronic guitars that bridge into a smooth melodic chorus. The next two songs follow a similar pattern, all containing a flashy guitar solo two-thirds of the way through the song that showcase guitarists Doug Aldrich and Reb Beach’s complementary guitar skills while giving Coverdale’s howling a brief rest.

Whitesnake fearlessly revives the infamous power ballad in “All I Want All I Need.” Typical of many power ballads, the song is grotesquely abundant in clichéd lyrics such as “No matter what I have to do/ Through thick and thin/ I’ll be your friend/ By your side till the very end.” The previously dominating guitars are reduced to a mere murmur as Cloverdale’s vocals reign supreme over the chiming synthetics of the keyboard while he sings about his dependence on women. Covering up their sympathetic tracks, the band follows with “Good to Be Bad” in which they shift from sissies to self-proclaimed badasses.

Overall, Good to Be Bad is an incarnation of what any fan would want from a Whitesnake CD, as it’s filled with intense, head-bobbing beats with catchy choruses. The bluesy “A Fool in Love” and drum-frenzied “Got What You Need” are examples of well-crafted hard rock songs but lack the modernization and progression necessary for the band to prevail in the 21st century. Nowadays, alternative rock has taken the place of the uncomplicated ’80s hard rock, and the soulful acoustic songs are the new the power ballad.

The band’s ability to stick to what they know has caused them to create replicas of the songs we left behind in the 1980s. Whitesnake’s Good to Be Bad proves the band still has the power-fueled fire that helped them rock out countless stadiums, but this time around they are more likely to be rocking out at your local county fair.