Saints & Sinners

Saints & Sinners is a work on which WHITESNAKE, while keeping the frame of bluesy hard rock, brought a deeper shadow and urgency into the songs. David Coverdale’s singing conveys not only strength but complex emotions of bitterness and wavering. Against a background of tension between members and change within the band, that strain is instead sublimated into rich melodic sense. The early forms of “Crying in the Rain” and “Here I Go Again” already hold strong melody that would lead to the great later success. Songs like “Youngblood,” “Victim of Love” and “Rock an' Roll Angels” breathe blues-rock heat and firm lyricism too. Turning the tension just before the end of one era of the band into rich melodic sense, it is a record of important meaning that foreshadows the later leap — some of the songs born here would later be re-recorded and sweep across the United States.