Life goes on. So they say. And it's never truer than in the case of UFO. How else can you explain the release of yet another anthology of music from the UFO camp? But, you can't fault them for looking forward and limiting the recordings on this CD to those produced in the last ten years. Notice I said recordings and not songs? Because here the live recordings feature 70s UFO perennials 'Lights Out', 'Let It Roll', 'This Kid's', 'Too Hot To Handle', 'Shoot Shoot' and last but certainly not least, 'Doctor Doctor'. It would've been far more ballsy to have left these out and stuck strictly with the UFO of the 21st Century. After all this is much more a reintroduction to 'new guitarist' Vinnie Moore than it is to UFO the band. And this is where the rest of the studio tunes have been culled from - the three studio albums that the band have recorded since Vinnie Moore came into the fold in 2004.

'The Wild One' opens up with a classic sounding UFO riff. It's an okay track. Phil Mogg conjures up his unique lyrical landscapes about drifters, loners and rebels but the song sees UFO completely comfortable in cruise mode. Actually Vinnie Moore's soloing is the most interesting thing on the track. What's that I can hear in the distance? Is that the sound of certain Über Röck scribes choking on their dinner? Much better is 'Hard Being Me'. Honky-tonking stomping and sleazy, with a slide guitar performance not seen outside of Raging Slab. 'Heavenly Body' has all the individual components that make up a good song: Zeppelinesque drums, heavy riff and crunching bass but Phil Mogg's uncharacteristic Gene Simmons-like guttural growls and stalled vocal delivery don't sit well with me. The end result is an attempt at a slow grungy metal that arguably shouldn't have been on 'The Monkey Puzzle' let alone 'The Best Of A Decade'.

Vinnie Moore, throughout the tracks presented here, adds an extra dimension to the band. His contributions range from the eclectic to the esoteric. Sure those 'eclectic' influences might borrow heavily from Van Halen as on 'Hell Driver' or Angus Young on 'When Daylight Comes To Town' but the colours that he brings to the studio recordings - blues, country - like on 'Saving Me' really help to keep the lifeblood flowing and the hearts a-pumping.

This is not to say that I'm completely won over by the 'new' UFO - far from it - I'm pretty much stuck in the past. And that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm stuck on Michael Schenker either although I am a fan. I could say that I'm more stuck on Paul Chapman but that might be misleading too. Maybe it's just the Paul Chapman-era that I'm stuck on. So I'm not really going to reignite the Schenker / Moore debate. To be truthful I'm not that much of a purist when it comes to UFO. Phil Mogg is the defining factor for me. Without Mogg there is no UFO. The only time I slightly missed Schenker was on 'Doctor Doctor'. There's something about Schenker's tone, his Wah Wah that defines that riff. It's hard to pull off without it.

So has this last decade produced any bona fide classics or is it just a case of UFO keeping on keeping on? Regrettably 'Best Of' material is a little thin on the ground. There are good tracks and there are not so good tracks. But there is one classic, a brief glimpse of UFO at their very, very best and that's 'Mr Freeze' - which I regard as a stand-out track. In fact if I compiled my own Best of UFO collection taking tracks from their whole career 'Mr Freeze' would be on it standing alongside other classics such as 'Only You Can Rock Me' and 'Long Gone'. 

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