After helping singer
David Coverdale reinvent
Whitesnake both sonically and aesthetically for the image-conscious American market, guitar hero
John Sykes acrimoniously left the group when it became apparent that there was only room enough for one overblown ego in it:
Coverdale's. Hardly ones to let a good thing slip away, though, the executives at
Whitesnake's label, Geffen Records (specifically A&R super-guru
John Kalodner), immediately signed
Sykes to a new development deal and proceeded to aid and abet him in founding his own supergroup,
Blue Murder, with veteran bassist
Tony Franklin and nearly geriatric drummer
Carmine Appice (whose career probably started before
Sykes was even born!). Released in 1989, the power trio's eponymous debut was produced to pompous perfection by none other than
Bob Rock, whose golden ears for bombastic yet consumer-friendly '80s metal were truly second to none at the time -- other than the one and only
Mutt Lange, of course. And perhaps more than any of
Rock's jobs prior to his hook-up with
Metallica,
Blue Murder proves it, thanks to songs ranging from muscular power-chord hell-fests like "Riot" and "Blue Murder"; to blues-inflected fare like "Jelly Roll" (whose video was soon all over MTV); to the all-important, overly lush (and frankly not all that good) power ballad "Out of Love." But the album has also become rather dated over the years, because of its frequent indulgence in the same sort of unchecked, peroxide-fueled "Bad
Zeppelin-isms" that were then being shamelessly appropriated by bands like
Kingdom Come and
Sykes' own former boss,
David Coverdale, and the reborn
Whitesnake. As such, prime offenders like the gratuitously preening "Sex Child," the impressively epic "Valley of the Kings," and the disappointingly tepid "Ptolemy" abused this ethically flawed (if unquestionably effective, from a sales standpoint) gimmick at its most grotesquely histrionic -- but no more so than any of the other groups cited above, really. And because
Blue Murder's songwriting was relatively consistent and their musicianship beyond reproach throughout, it's easy to understand why this album has endured far better than most similarly styled heavy metal albums of the era.