Album review : MIKE TRAMP – The Songs Of White Lion Vol III

September 22nd, 2025 by brianmc

Frontiers Music [Release date : 19.09.25]

Few musical artists get the chance to rerecord their old material.

Still fewer improve upon the originals.

Mike Tramp continues to claim – clearly very sincerely – that he is surprised to have got these opportunities. He’s now reached The Songs Of White Lion, Volume 3, and has again grabbed the opportunity with both hands.

White Lion’s material usually had more to say than your average rock song, lyrically it was more illustrative in its themes and concepts than most.

Back in the eighties, while their peer group were pouting and pointing, singer Mike Tramp was writing pithy stuff with guitarist Vito Bratta, talking up issues, large and small, universal and personal. From war dead (Warsong) and the genocide of American Indians (Cherokee), to sexual temptation (Dirty Woman) and street crime (In The City).

Worthy, yes, but unlikely chart material.

On these new recordings, Tramp partners with guitarist, Marcus Nand, bass man Claus Langeskov and drummer Morten Hellborn in recreating soft centred hard rock songs, investing them with a new found emotion and passion.

The down and dirty ‘She’s Got Everything’s tale of sexual naivety is something that is both melodic and muscular. And like the album’s new version of the anti-religion ‘If My Mind Is Evil’, it shares a greater sense of range and depth than the original.

Thanks to Nand’s sympathetic axework and the maturity that has grown into Tramp’s vocals, ‘Fight To Survive’ sounds fresh and new. And in doing so, it remains a bold snapshot of the complex art of survival.

A bluesy reimagining of ‘Radar Love’ closes the album in style. It still brings to mind the bar band/ biker video that accompanied the original. Some things never change. Thankfully. ***1/2

Review by Brian McGowan

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