Kingdom Come are one of those bands that have been around forever. And despite being a familiar name in my rock vocabulary I've never actually sat down and listened to an album. And I can't think of one reason why not. Maybe it was the Led Zeppelin comparisons early in their career and the subsequent backlash that stopped me. I like to think that I'm not influenced but such things. But who really knows? Give a person one excuse not to listen to a band and they take it with both hands.

So I'm in the peculiar position here of having never heard the band before and listening to an album comprised almost entirely of brand new re-recordings of earlier Kingdom Come songs. Whilst I'm in no position to comment on new versus old perhaps I fall into the other demographic that this album is aimed at. And that's the holy crusade for new converts.

If, like me, your feel that your tastes are far more eclectic than straight ahead rock can cater for well think again. 'Rendered Waters' manages to reel me right back in to a style of rock that I thought I was done with. I might be done with it but it's certainly not done with me. I'm scratching my head as to why I like 'Should I' so much. It certainly evokes the feeling I got when listening to MSG's 'Desert Song' in the early 80s. I'm a sucker for slow driving rhythms, which sound like they've been imported across distant sands from far away exotic places.

The following track 'I've Been Trying' is cut from the same cloth and I can't get enough of them both. It's only by 'Pushing Hard' that I'm figuring out that the reason I like this band above all is because of the figurative guitar work that picks and threads around the solid core of the rhythm section. The guitar work by Eric Foerster is more in the tradition of bands like White Lion who forwent straight ahead power chords in favour of a bit more texture.

'Seventeen' uses a variation on a riff that we've all heard before. But it's a good one so we can discreetly look the other way. And just when you think it's sounding a bit samey out comes the lead guitar with a tone to die for and rips away. It's tasty, tasty, very, very tasty, it's very tasty. Why do I suddenly feel like a bowl of Bran Flakes?

Considering that Lenny Wolf is Kingdom Come it's the vocals that catch my attention last of all. For no other reason than, just like the other instruments, they take their place as part of the whole without fighting for the upper hand. He's a great vocalist. He's no weak link. And with one of his favourite books being the user manual for Logic Pro I can't help but really like the man.

'Is It Fair Enough' is the best example of why I'm loving this album. Utilising an out of character clean chordal riff against a bouncy beat. It's catchier than a 20 barb-fishing pole.

It occurs to me that this album appeals to me for a different reason too. On the one hand this could be considered Kingdom Come's 'Greatest Hits' album. I'm almost pathologically allergic to greatest hits albums and would like to see this particular form die out. And maybe the time has come with the advent of single song downloads. Is there any need for the greatest hits album anymore? So it's fitting that bands take the time to revisit their back catalogue, shake the dust off, give them a spit and a shine and in doing so give the old fans and the new fans something fresh yet familiar.

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