Doogie White - As Yet Untitled

It was about time for Doogie White to release his debut album. Over 15 years since his appearance on Ritchie’s Rainbow, he had the chance to cooperate with the guitar wizard Malmsteen, to play in a very good band like Cornerstone and lately to be part of the legendary band Tank. Not bad at all, for the Scottish singer… so it was right about time to release his personal work.

 

The list of musicians participating on this album is quite impressive, so take a long breath and here we go: Drums - Patrick Johansson (Yngwie Malmsteen), Thomas Broman (Glenn Hughes); Keyboards - Derek Sherinian (Black Country Communion), Tony Carey (Rainbow); Bass - Neil Murray (Whitesnake), Greg Smith (Ted Nugent), Paul Logue (Edens Curse); Guitars - Pontus Norgren (Hammerfall), Marcus Jidell (Royal Hunt), Phil Hilborne (Queen Musical), Mick Tucker (Tank); Guest vocals - Patti Russo (Meatloaf, Cher). Pontus Norgren (Hammerfall, ex-The Poodles) has taken care of most of the production, which is really good.

 

This is a hard rock album… not doubt about it… the music is influenced (mostly) by Rainbow (how couldn’t it be), Dio, Cornerstone, the rockin’ moments of Malmsteen and AC/DC… that’s kind of strange… if we consider the fact that Doogie sings in two songs (“Time Machine” & “Catz Got Yer Tongue” – especially on this one) where he tries to sound like the great Bon Scott. That may be the case ‘cause he wanted to honor that unique vocalist… I can’t see any other profound reason here… those two songs are apart from the album itself.

 

The thing that left a bittersweet taste is that Doogie along with the guys that wrote the songs are moving on truly safe hard rockin’ paths. Great playing by everyone… but the songs really do not offer you something different. It’s like I’m listening to some b-sides of the aforementioned bands or some songs from bands that are heavily influenced by them and can get over it not matter what. Personally, I would prefer something different by Doogie and of course, a better songwriting with more personality and less elements from the bands that I mentioned before. Do not misunderstand me… this is not a bad album at all… but then again, it’s not an album that you will listen to in some years from now… it doesn’t have a single hard rock hymn in here… most of the songs are above average and some (especially those AC/DC wannabes) are fairly bad. I was expecting something much better than this one… but who knows maybe Doogie’s second solo album will be (and it must be) much better than this… he still can offer some good music… and he owes us (at least) a big hard rock anthem…after all these years…