I've listened to it twice now. What is the Dutch term for "kleine weiße Schlange"?! Because that is what they are, Whitebabysnake. The singer copies so many mannerisms of Coverdale and even the color of his voice he could be playing in a tribute, Adrian must have forced him to listen to David Coverdale for weeks. The music could be off any of the last two WS CDs, the only difference being that the production is not so overblown, I actually like the dryer, lower budget production of the Moonkings better, that Cinemascope sound Coverdale has opted for on recent WS CDs grates quickly. Vandenberg sounds whitesnakisher on this album than he did with Manic Eden or on WS' Restless Heart (the only WS studio CD he actually played on). It is as if he tried to prove "fate had it that I could not play on 1987 or on Slip of the Tongue, but I can craft the WS wall of sound too".
That said, within the confinements of the WS sound, I don't think that either the songwriting, the guitar playing (Vandenberg plays a bit too often flashy chromatic heavy metal runs in the music which do not always fit the blues rock backing, wasn't he once supposed to be the Dutch Michael Schenker as regards melodicism?) or the singing is bad though some of the "Moonkings do Whitesnake doing Led Zep"-songs are a bit too third generationish for me. I prefer the original, Kingdom Come.
No, that's not a younger David Coverdale singing here nor did Coverdale write the lyrics ('ere's a lyric for you: "sweet temptation - a celebration of lust and lies ..."
)
And on Sailing Ships, the WS reworking with Coverdale on guest vocals, Coverdale's voice is so sanitized and drowned in effects, it sounds like it was recorded in another - much more expensive - studio, which it probably was! He has more effects on that vocal track than the Moonkings have on the rest of the album combined.
But to give credit: The string arrangement is nice and Vandenberg plays the thing a lot more emotively than Vai ever did (for whom the music he had to play on Slip of the Tongue must have come from another planet, "Yuropean" as a vampire movie).
It's a well made album, but unfortunately derivative and I think the market is saturated, never mind that Jan is a more credible Coverdale than the original is these days live. Bass player has some nice touches too.