Customer Reviews

Voodoo Highway

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you like Led Zeppelin, Whitesnake, Deep Purple, and 70's era Bad Company, then you need to purchase all of the Badlands cataloge!

With that said, some record label needs to get smart and reissue these lost classics to a new generation of listeners. We're all starving for some traditional, hard driving rock n roll, amongst the college frat punks in garages claiming to be rock bands! The current music landscape in America is in sad, sad shape, and we all know it. Bo Bice from American Idol has covered the song, In A Dream, from the Voodoo Highway album. That song very well may win Bo the competition! With that in mind, shouldn't someone get a clue, and give us the Badlands releases again? The sellers that have the cd posted for sale now are simply trying to cash in and take advantage of people due to Bo's success with the song! In conclusion, be patient, because a major label will get their hands on the Badlands cataloge, and it will be available for everyone to enjoy!

Badlands are one of those "shoulda been" stories from the late 80's/early 90's, featuring absolutely smoking musicianship and vocals courtesy of former Ozzy guitarist Jake E. Lee and awesome singer Ray Gillen (RIP). This band sounds like a cross between Zeppelin, Deep Purple, with a bit of Hendrix and Foghat thrown in here and there. They truly recall the sounds of their heroes while sounding pretty fresh, this is one band that transcends the "hair metal" genre and actually does not sound the least bit dated. Most of the riffs on tunes are searing, especially "Soul Stealer" and "Heaven's Train", and "Shine On" kicks in sounding like a riffmonster from Alice In Chains. What drags this disc down is a few tunes that are, I hate to say, dull...but the good outweighs the bad. For fans of the previously mentioned band plus Whitesnake, Scorpions, and heavy Tesla. PS I think I found this for $5.99, so hunt around before dropping more than $15.

Best Tracks:
"The Last Time" - Whitesnake without the melodrama. Great driving tune.
"Whiskey Dust" - Probably my favorite slower tune on the album, this seems like it would be easy to characterize but I'm struggling to find a comparable artist/style. Barroom blues with the usual great vocals.
"Soul Stealer" - Neo-Hendrix riff kicks off this headbanger. Great blues based metal.
"Heaven's Train" - I swear, I wrote this riff without ever having heard the song and kicked myself that someone had thought of it first (and played the hell out of it). Another upbeat heavy rocker.

Much in the spirit of Zeppelin, the Badlands take their smart rock and outline a detailed map of musicianship that easily makes todays Limp Bizkit compost creations, a musty meddle of distasteful whiner garbage. When it's said that this CD is hard to find, there is a duel meaning. Finding a copy to own for yourself may be quite a challenge, but more importantly, a CD of this calibur is hard to find in a world where it's cool to regurgitate already virulent ideas. This CD is more than enough to make the group's cover of James Taylor's "Fire and Rain" a rock n' roll classic.

This is a cool album. While Jake E. Lee was never really excepted by many Ozzy fans because he had to follow Randy Rhoads, he has done excellent on his own. He has his own distinctive way of playing and the guitars on here are raw and scorching. With Ray Gillen singing, these guys fit like a glove together. The last time, Whiskey Dust, 3 Day Funk, and Silver Horses are just my favs and they smoke. This is a truly awesome album. Definitley as good as the first without sounding like the first one. It has its own sound and definitley rocks. Get this one.

Plenty of great music slips off the radar, and Badlands is among the greatest crimes of overlookage in the hard rock lexicon. Combining intelligence, chops, a reverance for "roots" music (true blues homage is all over the place here, just like with early Zeppelin) with modern metal sensibilities produces a shimmering rock experience in the form of Voodoo Highway. Whitesnake et al wished they could come up with something this real -- but then, if they had, they wouldn't have sold four billion albums either. There are few guitar slingers who can touch Jake E. Lee's inventiveness or technique while still being on planet earth, and in 1991 NOBODY had a better voice in rock than the late great Ray "from a bar band in Jersey into Sabbath" Gillen. Never a dull moment here, a feast of inspiration for guitarists, one of the best Alpine-in-the-Camero test albums for a summer afternoon ever released. Oh, and the cover of Fire and Rain is odd but exceptionally well done.

If you liked the first cd(badlands),you will also enjoy Voodoo Highway.It has a more "bluesy" sound to it,not quite as hard,but much more diverse in it's sound.Ray Gillen's awesome voice is not only a compliment to Lee's guitar,but could make even a poor or average band a force.He reminds me of a cross between Steve Perry(Journey) and Bruce Dickinson(Iron Maiden).Anything this guy has his voice on would be a worthy purchase,especially either of the Badlands cd's.The fact that they are no longer together is a shame and as hard as these two cd's are to find, (Badlands and Voodoo Highway-both out of print until recently) all rock and heavy metal fans should get their hands on these imports before they're gone again!

Absolutely great c.d. each time I listen to it I enjoy it more. This is good ol' fashion blues rock at it's best. Their remake of "Fire and Rain" is better than the original, and usually cover songs suck. When I listen to this c.d. I can't help but feel sad about Ray Gillen's death. This guy's voice truly is one of the very best I have ever heard. Badlands for some reason was overlooked in the music industry by fans and media and never received the respect they deserved. Anyone contemplating on whether or not to buy this c.d. take my advice and buy it. The money you spend will be well worth it. Oh and by the way Jake E. Lee is one of the best guitar players in the industry so that gives you more of a reason to buy it.

Cheesy album cover aside (should've just used Jeff Martin's 'gator with dobro in mouth' creation from the CD face instead.......) 'Voodoo Highway' represents the greatest 80's/early 90's hard rock band at their absolute peak. The debut was amazing but VH is much closer to what BADLANDS sounded like live - raw, edgy, dangerous, and taking chances. I remember a lot of people not liking the production all that much at the time but to me VH sounds just about perfect - it's stripped down, no frills, live wire BADLANDS. I can't even tell you how many times I've jammed along to this album on guitar - these songs will stay with me forever. Ah, yes, the songs - once again Jake and Ray (R.I.P.) prove to be the Page and Plant of the late 20th Century and come up with at least a half dozen mindblowing tracks that range from anthemic opener 'The Last Time' to Ray's soulful gospel acapella piece 'In A Dream' (a musical foreshadowing of his own death only a couple of years later....?) and everything in-between. I absolutely love the supercharging 'Soul Stealer' which literally explodes in your face and leads into '3-Day Funk' - talk about supa-doopa-groovin' (Jake always had that great wrist...) and being 'in the pocket'! Losing Eric Singer and gaining Greg's old Surgical Steel/St.Michael band mate Jeff Martin, whose Mitch Mitchell-style drumming fit Badlands to a T, really proved to be a godsend. You can literally tell these 2 guys have an almost kinetic connection as they provide for a loose but tight foundation that allows Jake to do his guitar thing with reckless abandon and Ray to shine (what a voice!) atop this latter day Led Zep rumblin' train. This album's 'Jade's Song' is 'Joe's Blues' (named after Jake's in-studio VH guitar tech, Joe Holmes, who could NOT play the blues at all but ironically enough would end up becoming Ozzy's guitar player a few years later....) where Jake proves his mastery of the acoustic guitar. Speaking of which, BADLANDS' electrified version of James Taylor's 'Fire and Rain' is absolutely stunning and truly does the original justice. Nothing much else to say other than a) BUY this underrated gem if you can find it (for a decent price) and, b) why is this album totally out-of-print (hello, Wounded Bird - aren't you guys doing all sorts of WEAtlantic re-issues?) to begin with?!

BADLANDS self titled debut CD was one of the finest hard rock releases ever, so I remember being very excited when this follow up came out. VOODOO HIGHWAY did not disappoint! It is filled with powerful guitar riffs and of course Ray Gillen's incredible vocals (RIP). Songs such as SILVER HORSES, WHISKEY DUST, HEAVEN'S TRAIN and SOUL STEALER are heavy blues based songs that will blow your doors off. IN A DREAM is a beautiful slow paced song that really shows off Gillen's vocal capabilities. The other songs are somewhere in between, all of them loaded with blues and funk! A great listen from beginning to end!

I highly recommend this CD, along with their self titled debut BADLANDS and DUSK (their third and final CD). After BADLANDS broke up, Ray Gillen joined a band called SUN RED SUN. They have a 3 CD box set "SUNSET" available that is another MUST HAVE! It's a little hard to find, but definitely worth the search!

Whitesnake meets James Brown at Jimi's house! what i mean is, it GROOOOOVES, DIRRRRRTY !

im so glad to see this reissued in 2011. i first heard this music when i was starting to play guitar 20 years ago. i was pretty taken with Jake and the other Ozzy guitarists but this second album particularly blew me away with its diversity, ferocity and CHOPS, all around...too soon after my cassette wore out and it took me many years to search out an expensive CD copy out of Japan...now as a professional guitar player, my better educated ears were even more blown away by Jake's variety of masterful guitar tones, Rays giant vocals and the bass and drums EXCEPTIONAL tracking of very tight riffs...(something we have all come to acknowledge and revere in this modern digital editing age...) so yeah its sounds VERY WARM, analog....DIG.
if you love ZEP and Hendrix with a hard rock bravado or just enjoy a sweet melody, some acoustic blues or a James Taylor cover, THIS IS THE BEST OF ITS KIND!
Producer, Jake E. Lee is easily in the top handful of guitarists to venture into such coveted territory...his sonic approach is upfront yet never dominates the mix. his tone often saturates, achieving that illusive mystique missing from too much of today's rock music. he plays his living ass off, period.


THIS MUSIC IS NON-STOP BAD-ASS!!!