Having reformed the band to make the underrated Winger IV album and perform a controversial live show at Firefest, Kip Winger has emptied the vaults to delight both Frontiers Records and fans of the band with a double disc of 36 demos for the band's first three albums. In general the demos are not too different in song structure from the finished versions, but significantly rawer and with programmed drums, which, together with the gang backing vocals, give many of them a distinct Def Leppard feel.

Around three quarters of the songs made it to the albums, but there are little surprises at every stage: Only Love, which didn't make the first album, has a chorus to die for, and the four unreleased from 'In The Heart Of The young' are all gems, with All I ever Wanted particularly Leppard-esque.

It is easy to see how the songs written for Pull didn't make it, as they are distinctly more commercial than the darker turn that album took.

You also get a couple of songs (Star Tripper and Hour of Need) which subsequently had new lyrics added to become Baptised by Fore and In my Veins respectively, and the odd song that ended up on other people's albums (Without Warning, covered by Khymera).

A goldmine for Winger fans (even those with bootlegs already of this stuff) and for others a reminder of Kip Winger's underrated songwriritng talent.

****

Review by Andy Nathan