There can be few less comfortable things to be than a heavy metal singer as one trudges into one's late 30s and early 40s: you can't get your head into the mindlessly hedonistic mindset anymore, and you have similar difficulty getting your waistline into the spandex leggings. Your choices are either to carry on regardless, as Kiss have, selling yourself as a knowingly kitsch pantomime, or attempt to reinvent yourself as a serious, song-writing artiste, as both Def Leppard and Bon Jovi have sought to do. This latter course is the one David Coverdale has opted for here. As former screecher with metal behemoths Deep Purple and Whitesnake, Coverdale has more to live down than most, but he makes a game stab at it on Into The Light. The only photo of him on the sleeve shows the famous peroxide mane tidily cropped, and relies on a battered acoustic guitar as a central prop. Sadly, as a metaphor for the music, this is only partially apt. While ballads such as "Love Is Blind" and "Don't Cry" verge on an attractively modest melancholy, Coverdale's native tongue remains one of blustering bellicosity. The big guitars and bigger keyboards are in unabashed command from the early "River Song" onwards, and by the time he yelps the grim doggerel of "Wherever You May Go" ("You mean the world to me/More than I can say/And when I look at you/It takes my breath away") you've got conclusive proof that you can take the man out of the heavy metal, but... --Andrew Mueller