Whitesnake – Saints and Sinners – 1982
Okay, I admit it. This isn’t really fair. I’ve set a precedent with myself that the Listening Post series is a completion series. I’m supposed to listen to one band’s catalog from beginning to end and immerse myself in that chronology.
The task I set at hand was to explore the many tentacled tendrils of the roots of metal as started by Black Sabbath and Deep Purple.
So many of the players seem to bounce to other groups in this cluster. Ozzy leaves BS and Dio is brought in. Dio was a singer for Rainbow which was the band by the lead guitarist of DP. And so on….
Ian Gillan’s replacement in Purple was David Coverdale. And it only made sense to follow his path as well. And that’s where I break tradition with my own rules. I avoided the early records by Whitesnake. I didn’t want to hunt them down, buy them, borrow them, anything. Who would want to devote THAT much time to David Coverdale besides Tawny Kitaen?
Maybe I should have. Because this record presents them with an unfair advantage: It skews the curve.
Saints and Sinners is a damn fine record. It’s got the blues, the ballads, the shrieks, the harmonies, everything a band would need to succeed in the early days of MTV.
Straddling the delicate balance of Hair/Glam metal and Heavy Metal, S&S succeeds in every single song. I’m not sure what happens in a few years when the band tries its hand at ring grabbing glory but this record is a fantastic amalgam of Zeppelin, Aerosmith and Glam Metal.
Grade: A
ASide: Here I Go Again, Young Blood, Rough and Ready, Bloody Luxury
BlindSide: Love and Affection, Rock and Roll Angels, Dancing Girls, Crying in the Rain
