Track Listing

1. Holy Water
2. Walk Through Fire
3. Stranger Stranger
4. If You Needed Somebody
5. Fearless
6. Lay Your Love on Me
7. Boys Cry Tough
8. With You in a Heartbeat
9. I Don't Care
10. Never Too Late
11. Dead of the Night
12. I Can't Live Without You
13. 100 Miles

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #30743 in Music
• Released on: 1990-05-31
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

Where is Paul Rodgers's magic voice ?
This band can't be called "Bad Company". Listen to "Burnin' sky" and you'll see what I mean !

the best of the Howe-era Bad Company albums
I think we can all agree that the old Bad Company albums with Paul Rodgers on vocals are rightly viewed as classics. I also think that if you take an honest look back at those albums, you'll see that those last few albums were not on the same level as Bad Company or Straight Shooter. The band needed a shot in the arm and got just that when they hired former Ted Nugent vocalist Brian Howe. Howe was the perfect choice for the arena rock decade, and his tenure in Bad Company is still criminally underrated.

I know this kind of AOR/arena rock is almost universally ridiculed now, but plenty of us who grew up in that era can still appreciate an album full of big guitar hooks, rock anthems, bic-flicking ballads, and an unapologetic use of keyboards. Bands like Damn Yankees, Bad English, Foreigner, and of course Bad Company embraced this sound, and rode an unexpected second wave of popularity as a result.

Bad Company's 1990 album Holy Water is (pardon the pun) the high water mark for the Howe-era lineup. This album starts with the powerful title track and then hits you with the song "Walk Through Fire", which is one of the era's absolute best rock songs (Lou Gramm's "Midnight Blue" is the other). It doesn't let up there, instead charging through rockers like "Stranger Stranger" and "Fearless" as well as the hit ballad "If You Needed Somebody". Someone already noted that the album loses a little steam in the second half, but even the average song on Holy Water is still better than many of their contemporaries' best efforts.

This is about as strong an AOR album as you could ever hope to find. The first half easily deserves a 5-star rating, and the second half is worthy of at least 4 stars. Holy Water may remain shunned by old school Bad Company fans, but it's one of the era's best rock albums, and one that all 80's/early 90's rock fans will definitely want to check out.

Holy Water Theme
I really love the song Holy Water, with its big-power-song rhythms and lyrics. Bad Company provides an entire album wrapped around that feeling.

If you've heard Holy Water and don't like it, then let's be honest, you probably won't like this CD. That's what the whole CD is about - blasting guitars, loud vocals about overcoming obstacles and getting to your goals. If you buy a new age CD about oceans, you get lots of soothing songs about the ocean. If you get Holy Water, you get lots of charge-you-up, you-can-do-it songs about relationships. That sounds fine by me!

Walk through Fire is of course about facing obstacles to get to someone. Stranger Stranger is about a hot, humid daydream. The other songs have their own variations, but mostly this is a long power-opus to the power of the individual who Knows What He Wants and is Willing to Go Get it.

There are plenty of other CDs out there for those seeking complex guitar solos and multiplex harmonies. Sometimes you just want a belting-it-out song that screams of leather jackets and smokey bars. This is the one!