Great White - Shot In The Dark (1986)

1986's Shot in the Dark was Great White's sophomore album and major-label debut through Capitol, having attracted enough positive press during its initial independent pressing to help the So-Cal hard rockers leave their spawning grounds in the music industry shallows in order to dive into its deeper waters, as it were. No, Great White still wasn't quite ready to challenge bigger fish in the American glam metal ocean like Ratt or Mötley Crüe just yet, but in promising tracks like "She Shakes Me" and "Run Away," the fledgling group dispensed prime examples of the muscular, distinctly blues-infused sound they would carry on finessing towards platinum status over the course of subsequent albums, Once Bitten… and …Twice Shy. For its part, Shot in the Dark also boasted a suitably glossed-up (but effective) power ballad in "Waiting for Love," and a meticulously assembled cover of Angel City's blues-rock anthem "Face the Day." At the same time, the album featured almost as many middling, overly sanitized rockers in the title cut and "Is Anybody There?" (both liable to waver between excellence and utter suckage, depending on individual feelings about the overall hair metal aesthetic); a similarly soulless cover of "Gimme Some Lovin'"; and a total washout in the stutter-paced, synth-accented, almost new wave-like "What do You Do?" Shot in the Dark was a mixed bag, in other words, but one that nevertheless represented yet another crucial step in Great White's steady evolution into top predators within their ever-widening hair metal ocean of the mid-'80s.