GUNS N' ROSES — Appetite For Destruction (review)

GUNS N' ROSES — Appetite For Destruction album cover Album · 1987 · Hard Rock Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Time Signature
It's so easy...

Genre: hard rock

You know, they typically say about something that you either love it or hate it. With Guns n' Roses it's not an either-or but a both-and thing, since they both appeal to me and annoy me at the same time. I think that "Appetite for Destruction" is one of the best hard rock albums of the late 1980s, but at the same time I utterly cannot stand Axl Rose's wailing vocals. Fortunately for me, the dirty and straightforward quality of the music is more salient to me than the vocals.

I also tend to dislike the lyrics, a lot of which are simplistic and kliché-ish - I especially dislike the many misogynistic elements of the album. This is a new element to my experience of this album. Back when it came out, I didn't think too much about the lyrics, but now that I'm much older and wiser, I must admit that I think that a lot of the lyrics on this album are plain.... stupid.

There are the inevitable hits like "Welcome to the Jungle", "Paradise City" (with a riff famously nicked from Black Sabbaths "Zero the Hero"), and "Sweet Child of Mine" and, to some extent, "The Rocket Queen" and "Mr Brownstone", all of which I are good rock songs (well, maybe "Mr Brownstone" would have been better off without the sloppy percussion).

But it's actually the less revered filler tracks that I like the best, such as "It's so Easy" in which Axl's vocals are actually tolerable and the good ole guitar rockers "Night Train", "Out Ta Get Me", "Think About You", "You're Crazy" as well as the darker "My Michelle" and the cheeky "Anything Goes". I think that these tracks are really good and catchy tracks which deserve more attention.

"Appetite for Destruction" is one of the most important, and best, hard rock / metal albums of the late 1980, and were it not for Axl's annoying wailing, I'd given this album five stars. As I said, I love and hate this album at the same time (I love it more than I hate it though).

This will certainly appeal to fans of hard rock, glam metal and probably also fans of traditional heavy metal. But don't listen to the lyrics... they're just stupid and reek of the sexual frustrations of puberty-stricken insecure teenage boys.
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