Slash
Slash assembled an army of stellar singers to help take the tunes of his first solo album to the next level. He also gathered a distinguished lineup of musicians to help flesh out these kickass songs, part of which comprises Izzy Stradlin, Duff McKagan and Steven Adler. Add your top-hatted six-string host and you have *Appetite for Destruction*- era GNR…sans Axl Rose. But who needs Axl when the Cult’s Ian Astbury kicks off the party with “Ghost,” a perfect hybrid of Sunset Strip hair metal and post-goth alt-rawk? And it wouldn’t be a real metal party without Ozzy lending his unmistakable howls to the foreboding “Crucify the Dead.” Ever wondered what Fergie would sound like singing for GNR? Wonder no more — she kills it on “Beautiful Dangerous,” a song so good she can’t deny that rock music may need her to stick around. Wolfmother’s Andrew Stockdale sounds like he was born for this project, as the bluesy “By the Sword” plays better than his own band. If *Chinese Democracy* left you with a bad taste, *Slash* offers the perfect chaser.
Like Jeff Beck before him, Slash is a superstar guitarist who can’t sing a lick -- a situation that poses a considerable problem when it comes time to record a solo album, which apparently is whenever his band collapses under the preening ego of a lead singer. When combing through the wreckage of GNR he decided to form a band whose singer almost seemed like an afterthought, but he took a different route after the meltdown of Velvet Revolver, choosing to follow Santana’s Supernatural blueprint, hauling in a different singer for each track. Of course, Supernatural was designed with the intention of having Santana cross over to a new audience, but Slash, with the exception of Fergie howling “Beautiful Dangerous,” was made with his old fans in mind, bringing in gnarled old rockers like Ozzy, Lemmy, and Iggy to carry the brunt of the work, slipping in a few new faces -- like Andrew Stockdale of Wolfmother, Rocco DeLuca (the first signing to Kiefer Sutherland’s label), and Myles Kennedy, chosen to front Slash’s supporting tour for the record -- along the way.
Axl Rose's old sidekick is back with a bunch of riffs and some special guests. Shame no-one goes the extra mile, says <strong>Caroline Sullivan</strong>