Snakecharmer
Second Skin

Supergroup Snakecharmer’s second album Second Skin has to be a given purchase for those living in the past and thinks that Whitesnake is the best that has ever happened to music. Whitesnakers founded the band and they enlisted the singer from Heartland, a guy from Wishbone Ash and a guy from Thunder and Magnum. That all seems perfectly reasonable if you want to make a good album, but as usual with supergroups it tends to be the other way round, sure the album sounds solid, excellently performed and produced but duller than a beige Volvo a grey summer day in the north of Sweden – which was the dullest thing I could think of right now.

We get hardrock of the eighties, British styled and very remnant of a band called Whitesnake, the singer even does a convincing Coverdale in several of the songs. And on the subject of covers, the compositions may be original in title and lyrics but sounds like they could have been Whitesnake covers, it isn’t exactly what I would call original – actually it is not even close to that. The production and sound is good though, the songs are of the usual variety some bluesy influences as is to be expected, in fact if you knew the names and the bands they were from you would probably have guessed that they sounded like this album does. I think it lacks imagination and soul, a slightly freshened up version of what Whitesnake did in the past but without the originality.

It is not bad; the songs have catchiness and all of that. But I find it very difficult to focus on this album, or should I write to care about it? Because that is what it is, it feels difficult to bother with just another album that sound like something from the Whitesnake catalogue that is already more than big enough as it is, and all the other happy standard rockers from that era as well, who will really care about one more such album? This album will not make a lasting impression on anyone who has been exposed to some music; the only chance for anyone to really fall in love with it is that it is the first and only album they hear in this genre.

More than that is really difficult to muster up, I don’t really see the point and I have difficulty to even care enough to listen – but I have done so at considerable difficulty. And my lasting impression is that the only ones that can really take this album to heart are the six guys that made it, the question is if even they will care about it a few years from now. It is that bland and unoriginal, not a very charming album.

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