Rock Of Ages: new albums from Def Leppard and Whitesnake

How much rock can you handle?

There's a lot of it coming your way regardless. Titans

Def Leppard

and

Whitesnake

- who will tour the UK together in June - both have long-awaited studio albums coming this Spring. Here's what we know so far…

Leppard's new album - the first since last year's dubious

Yeah

covers album - will be called

Songs From The Sparkle Lounge

. It's named after the backstage area that the band used to write the bulk of material while on their US tour with

Journey

The album will arrive in Europe on

5 May 5

in the UK (6 May in North America) and the tentative track listing (these are working titles for the songs apparently) is as follows:

01. Nine Lives

02. C'mon C'mon

03. Go

04. Love

05. Cruise Control

06. Bad Actress

07. Hallucinate

08. Tomorrow

09. Come Undone

10. Only the Good Die Young

11. Give It Away

The first single off the album is

Nine Lives

, which features a guest appearance by country star

Tim McGraw

Bassist

Rick Savage

has gone on record saying the album the album can be described as a mix of their 1981 album

High 'N' Dry

with 1987 classic

Hysteria

Well

poor some sugar on us and take a photograph

if that's not an exciting promise - but let's just hope it's not got any

rapping

on it like 2002's

Meanwhile

David Coverdale

is finally ready to unleash a brand new

Whitesnake

album on us. Here at

Guitarist

we love a bit of 'Snake so we're as excited as anyone about this.

Good To Be Bad

will surface at the

end of April

in Europe via SPV/Steamhammer

Rock god Coverdale - who last year

took on a bear and won

- had this to say about Good To Be Bad:

"The new album contains all the elements I enjoy about Whitesnake, and more. I can hear moments that take me back to the bluesy, early years of the band all the way through the band's musical history to fully embrace the more electric aspects of where we are now, as a band. I'm thrilled with it and can hardly wait to unleash it on an unsuspecting public! If this is indeed the last Whitesnake studio record, then I'm happy to finish like this. It was a labor of love making this record...a joy... and I'm still enjoying listening to it. Can't be bad!"

Well that's good enough for us, Dave.

The album, written by Coverdale and guitarist

Doug Aldrich

(who also co-produced the album with Coverdale and Michael McIntyre) is said to contain the magic balance of

eight rockers and three ballads

. Coverdale feels it's the first "real" Whitesnake album in almost 20 years, commenting,

"It's very butch. Very muscular..."

Indeed!

Good to be Bad track listing:

01. Call On Me

02. Can You Hear The Wind Blow?

03. Best Years