Extreme are returning too.

I'll be seeing both in a few weeks time at the Graspop festival in Belgium, which should be pretty cool.

Almost as good as Whitesnake's early 80s stuff, you say? Seeing as I've been listening to Slide It In a fair bit recently, I should check this out. If the ballads can touch the likes of Blindman and aren't Is This Love-style nonsense, I'm even more in!

Haven't had much interest in anything Def Leppard have released since Pyromania, once I heard much of Hysteria I thought it was far too weak and overproduced. But then, I always preferred the stuff they did back when they were playing proper Hard Rock.

Now, I await the new Judas Priest album.

Both Whitesnake and Def Leppard have released new albums, is this a poodle-haired rebellion against a land being taken over by hippity hops and RnBees?

Well, Songs from the Sparklelounge, the new Leppard album, starts of as it means to go on.  While it's no Hysteria, it oozes energy and tongue-in-cheek rock attitude.  A few duffers let it down a bit midway, but for the most part it's a rock party in a suitcase.

The new Whitesnake album, Good to be Bad, has all the guitar, all the Coverdale vocals and all the Rock Ballards it quite rightly should have, almost as good as their early 80's work (right up to and including 87, before Slip of the Tongue).

Viva le Rock, as Mr Adam Ant once said...