T-Bone wrote:I recommend getting their G album as well as their new one
Their stuff AFTER the G album got a little more mellow and AORish. They also enlisted Mandy Meyer, formerly of Asia, on some of those albums. The production is ALWAYS top notch on each of their releases

Ironically enough, Gotthard is somewhat a continuation/rebirth of a rather unknown band called Cobra, who had one Jimi Jamison of later Survivor fame singing for them. Gotthard has covered a few Cobra songs, and you can hear a little of the Cobra sound on the first album before they went for their own style.
The first few albums were pretty much straight ahead hard rock, with G being the best by far. Then after sucess with an acoustic live album (De-Frosted), they went pretty soft for a while before starting to put hard rock back into the mix. After Mandy Meyer left, they charged back into hard rock with Lipservice and last year's Domino Effect, which saw the band modernize their sound a bit. The later sound is (as best as can be described) a European version of post-New Jersey Bon Jovi with a higher singer who can nail Led Zeppelin. Check out youtube--there's a bunch of stuff there including most of the live dvd they released from the Lipservice tour.