Supergroups really worth anything are rare, but Badlands definitely was one. It may help that hardly any of the band members were household names to the rock audience at large, with only guitarist Jake E. Lee having a high profile gig fulfilling the thankless task of replacing Randy Rhoads in Ozzy Osbourne’s band for five years. Alleged behind the scenes bickering aside, when Lee and his band mates clicked, the results were magical. Their self-titled debut album was a good album and a moderate success, but also slightly too polished for its own good. ‘Voodoo Highway’ feels more like something they truly wanted to do.

Overall, the elements making up Badlands’ music are not radically different from their debut. The elements demanding most of the attention are still Lee’s playful riffs – which appears to be his focus rather than his sizeable lead guitar skills – and the marvellous vocals by Ray Gillen. His characteristic, powerful howl still remains part of the upper echelon of rock vocals almost three decades after his early death. It’s just that ‘Voodoo Highway’ has a much more rootsy swagger than the debut. The album sounds direct and deliberately underproduced. And all the better for it.

Nowhere more is the rootsy, stripped-down approach more obvious than on the country blues dobro stomp that is the title track, the sparse gospel blues of closer ‘In A Dream’ and the brief instrumental ‘Joe’s Blues’.  But it can certainly be heard on the harder rocking tracks as well. If the production was left in the hands of Paul O’Neill, who handled the first album, tracks like ‘Shine On’, ‘Show Me the Way’ and the James Taylor cover ‘Fire And Rain’ would probably have been glossed up significantly. The power of ‘Voodoo Highway’ as a whole, however, lies in the raw, spontaneous manner in which these songs were captured.

As a result, the hooks on ‘Voodoo Highway’ are slightly less immediate than on the debut, but after hearing the album a couple of times, it is just about impossible to get tracks like the incredibly powerful opener ‘The Last Time’, the groovy strut of ‘Whiskey Dust’ and the exciting uptempo rocker ‘Silver Horses’ out of your head. It also feels like the band is allowed to let loose just a little bit more this time around, resulting in fiery, harder-than-average rocking tracks like ‘Heaven’s Train’ and the ripping bluesrocker ‘Soul Stealer’.

Ultimately, the legacy of Badlands was cut short by a combination of inner turmoil, a changing music business landscape and the AIDS-related death of Gillen, basically ending the songwriting partnership between him and Lee. Fans of gutsy rock music with beyond incredible vocals still have ‘Voodoo Highway’ to enjoy, however. It is easily one of the best albums of its kind and era, when most eighties hardrock bands either ceased to exist or tried to force themselves down the Seattle-styled path their managements and record labels demanded from them. The songs are fantastic, the musicianship fluent and natural and the album simply aged really well.

Recommended tracks: ‘The Last Time’, ‘Silver Horses’, ‘Heaven’s Train’