Slash - Slash Review

Posted by Aaron Titan on 04.06.2010

Slash brings his first true solo album to the masses. A bunch of his famous friends sing and play on it. Does all that notoriety, star-power, and an iconic top hat result in a worthwhile listen?




The Tracklisting

01) “Ghost” featuring Ian Astbury of The Cult & Izzy Stradlin (ex-Guns N’ Roses)
02) “Crucify the Dead” featuring Ozzy Osbourne and Taylor Hawkins of Foo Fighters/Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders
03) “Beautiful Dangerous” featuring Fergie
04) “Back from Cali” featuring Myles Kennedy of Alter Bridge
05) “Promise” featuring Chris Cornell of Soundgarden/ex-Audioslave
06) “By the Sword” featuring Andrew Stockdale of Wolfmother
07) “Gotten” featuring Adam Levine of Maroon 5
08) “Doctor Alibi” featuring Lemmy Kilmeister of Motorhead
09) “Watch This” featuring Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters/Them Crooked Vultures/ex-Nirvana) and Duff McKagan (Velvet Revolver/Duff McKagan’s Loaded/Jane’s Addiction/ex-Guns N’ Roses)
10) “I Hold On” featuring Kid Rock
11) “Nothing to Say” featuring M. Shadows of Avenged Sevenfold
12) “Starlight” featuring Myles Kennedy of Alter Bridge
13) “Saint is a Sinner Too” featuring Rocco DeLuca of Rocco DeLuca and The Burden
14) “We’re All Gonna Die” featuring Iggy Pop











The Album

Just to preface before I begin here, I’m only going to be reviewing the Standard Edition that’s being released here in the U.S. (and most of the globe from what I gathered on Wikipedia). There are other versions with other tracks on them that feature other artists you’ve heard of, such as Alice Cooper and Flea. You can actually peep out this album via AOL Music just like I did. Not sure how long this will stay up on that site, but I figure it’ll be there until release day and a few days afterwards.

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OK, so I just got done listening to Slash’s solo album from start to finish. I’ve been reading and reporting about this thing for several months now (via my column here on 411Mania: The Music 3R’s) and it’s finally arrived. Most of you know the story behind the album here, but if not, essentially, Slash decided he wanted to have some fun and make a solo album.

Velvet Revolver has been stagnant for a really long time now, ever since the departure of vocalist Scott Wieland in 2008. Slash and company haven’t been able to find a proper vocalist to fill this vacancy despite their endless auditioning process. So now, he’s got the time to do this solo project he mentioned in his autobiography (read that shit if you haven’t yet!).

From what I read about this album, Slash wrote a bunch of music and guitar riffs and shopped them around to potential collaborators he thought would sound well on each track. If the artist bit, he brought them into the studio and they arranged and recorded the song. Think Santana’s Supernatural album, but like, heavier and without Rob Thomas.

The result itself was incredibly underwhelming considering the parties involved. On paper, this album looks pretty bitchin’ overall, doesn’t it? I can honestly say that I was pumped after seeing the tracklisting and who was on each song. I’ve been a Gn’R fan since forever, dug Velvet Revolver’s first album, and like many of the artists Slash got on board for this project; however, overall, it just doesn’t cut the mustard.

I mean, you’ve got Slash and Ozzy doing a song together, which is cool and all, but it would’ve meant much more like, at least ten years ago when Ozzy hadn’t lost all the cred and respect he had left. The bigness of this collaboration just wasn’t there for me and “Crucify the Dead” is just mediocre at best.

The Fergie song “Beautiful Dangerous” sounds passable from a musical perspective. Slash’s riffing isn’t the problem at all. It’s just that you’ve got Fergie on there trying to be something she’s not: a rock singer. She’s a hip-hop Wack-Ass Peas singer and she’s going out of her way on this song to put some rock n’ roll grit on her voice like she’s Lita Ford or something. It just doesn’t work and comes off pretty annoying, though I can see a lot of fans liking this song for whatever reason.

And fuck man, not that Kid Rock is that great of a vocalist to begin with, but how did Slash and his sound engineer sit there and master this album and not recognize that “I Hold On” has the worst sounding vocals on the entire album? It’s really weak and gaspy at times and Kid Rock was capable of much more than that.

Also, you’ve got a lot of mediocrity on here in places you wouldn’t expect it. The Chris Cornell and Adam Levine tracks, “Promise” and “Gotten” respectively, while cool and interesting collaborations in theory, just don’t work and end up sounding like anything else on rock radio, which is where this album will undoubtedly find some decent success.

What did bum me out was that M. Shadows of Avenged Sevenfold didn’t come in and kill it on a track like I thought he would. “Nothing to Say” ends up sounding like a B-side AX7 wannabe of a song in the end in every sense possible. I mean, I could see where you could make an argument that Synyster Gates, the lead guitarist of AX7, takes a lot of cues from Slash’s iconic playing and sound, but on this track I just felt like Slash was trying to play like Gates to accompany Shadows’ singing, which isn’t necessary or even desirable on YOUR OWN SOLO ALBUM. I figured these two would be a killer pairing but it just wasn’t meant to be.

Thankfully, it’s not all just a basket of throwaways! The riff and vocals of the Ian Astbury- and Izzy Stradlin-feature track, “Ghost,” are pretty saucy and fun. “By the Sword,” the lead single off of the album, is in good graces with me too. It’s catchy and Andrew Stockdale of the mighty Wolfmother hasn’t been able to do wrong by this writer as of yet. “Watch This” is a fun instrumental jam that features Dave Grohl on drums and Jane’s Addiction’s new bass player Duff McKagan on…well, the bass obviously. I could see this song being a key staple of Slash’s solo band’s set when he takes these tunes out on the road this year.

The standout track for me is “Doctor Alibi” which features the godliness of Motorhead’s Lemmy Kilmeister. It’s just a fuckin’ awesome, simple punked-up metal song that makes the rest of the corny poppiness that pervades the majority of the disc sound silly.

In the end though, I just don’t get a “Slash experience.” Nothing about this album really makes me respect Slash anymore than I did, and I’ll go as far as saying I respect him a little less now. He’s trying to do too many styles here to accompany the myriad of guest spots rather than having those artists instead, adapt to a Slash album and make the whole affair more interesting and unique in that respect.

The 411: While there are a few decent tracks on the album, there's more 'meh' and way more garbage to make the disc salvageable. It's not that there's too much going on style-wise, but it just lacks any sense of the 'WOW' factor that Slash's playing had on past albums he's been a part of. Myles Kennedy should've just joined Velvet Revolver, since his two songs sound pretty decent and he's going to be Slash's touring vocalist anyways. All in all, the album looks good on paper, but unfortunately, we don't have paper in our ears.

Final Score:  5.5   [ Not So Good ]