Customer Reviews

Burst the Bubble

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... than all the "modern" band's.
The Company Of Snakes take the Pre-1987 Whitesnake sound and run with it.After the mostly covers Double CD "Here They Go Again" this CD is all new material.I knew pretty much what I was going to be getting before the CD arrived all except for one thing - Stefan Berggren's vocals!!! He sounds like David Coverdale but He does not sound like He is 'trying" to sound like Him.Nice to know there's younger singers out there who can sing like this! I see a bright future for Him! Bottom line, this is bluesy soulfelt hard rock that would be at home in the late 70's/early 80's and right at home in My CD player!!!

The core of Company Of Snakes is the two former members of Whitesnake's best line up (Bernie Marsden & Mickey Moody). When they first formed the band they hired a "Coverdale-sound-alike" singer and simply called the band The Snakes. That line up released one album titled "Once bitten..." and it sounded so similar to (early) Whitesnake that some people actually were fooled to believe it was Whitesnake! After some internal problems the singer got fired, and ex Bad Company vocalist Robert Hart joined the band and the name was changed to Company Of Snakes (an obvious reference to Bad Company & Whitesnake). Robert Hart didn't stay so Marsden and Moody recruited an unknown singer from Sweden - Stefan Berggren, and the well known bass player Neil Murray, who also was a member of the classic Whitesnake line up.

"Burst the bubble" is a good album although it contains too many songs, which has a tendency to draw attention away from the real highlights. If they cut down the number of tracks, to say 10 songs, it would be a much more solid effort.

Some of the songs are in fact re-recordings of tunes from their debut album ("Once bitten..."). I'm sorry to say, but the great "Little miss happiness" were even better in the original version when it was slightly faster and groovier, but it's still one of the best songs. Other outstanding tracks are:

"Labour of love", a bluesy rocker with the same excellent vocal arrangements we got used to listening to David Coverdale back in the mid 1970's.

"Ride, ride, ride" with its obvious similarity to "Outlaw" from Whitesnake's album "Lovehunter".

"What love can do" sounds very much like more recent Whitesnake ballads like "The deeper the love" - a bit soft but still good.

"Back to the blues" - like the title implies it's a blues based rock song, better than the average.

I like the fact that Berggren keep his singing rather low, and not try to impress us with the "high pitch screams" some other vocalists seem to think is the main task of being a rock singer. If you sit around complaining about the current state of music and wonder where all the good times have gone, I think this album would be of interest. It's not as good as Whitesnake's "Love hunter" and "Ready an' willing" but it's the closest thing to the original at this time.

Featuring the two 'snakes' Bernie Marsden and Mickey Moody,plus legendary Neil Murray and John Lingwood,this Company delivers,aided by the strong and inspired vocals of one Swedish Stefan Berggren.This is a beautiful and long awaited album full of nostalgia and also new blood;for the die-hard Whitesnake/Coverdale fans this album is a special treat:full on smokey blues and rock'n'roll that stands proudly aside "Ready and Willing".

2002's Burst the Bubble is the first album of original material from Company of Snakes. I picked up Burst the Bubble expecting to love it. On paper, Company of Snakes seems to have everything going for it. They have former Whitesnake guitarists Bernie Marsden and Mickey Moody and bassist Neil Murray, a great singer in former Snakes in Paradise frontman Steffan Berggren, and the album was produced by Nikolo Kotzev (of Brazen Abbott). This should have been great, but instead it falls flat.

I was expecting - and I think this is entirely reasonable - something similar to the old Whitesnake albums; some sexually-charged blues rock to wake the neighbors. Burst the Bubble does have its rockin' moments, but most of the songs have a more polished AOR feel. Steffan Berggren sounds a lot less like David Coverdale and a lot more like Paul Rodgers here. The result is a middle of the road AOR album that sounds like it could have come from Bad Company's mid 80's, pre-Brian Howe run of albums, and that's not really a compliment. The album has a few good songs, but for the most part just fades into the background, and that's not something I'd ever say about the old Whitesnake albums.

It's a perfectly decent melodic rock album, but I have a hard time seeing Burst the Bubble satisfying many old school Whitesnake fans. Bad Company fans, on the other hand, might get a bit more mileage out of this one.