GUNS N' ROSES — Use Your Illusion I (review)

GUNS N' ROSES — Use Your Illusion I album cover Album · 1991 · Hard Rock Buy this album from MMA partners
2.5/5 ·
Pekka
This is the first part of the "We're the biggest rock band in the world, we can do what we want" album of Guns N' Roses. At the turn of the decade they were right about the first point and perhaps the second as well, but that doesn't necessarily mean that anything the biggest band in the world does is as good as everything they did when they were unknown and hungry.

This is probably one of the most patchy albums in my entire record collection, there are some absolute masterpieces and then some rather boring fluff. The sound of the album is somewhat more stiff than the loose and lively debut, thanks to an eternity spent in studio and the new drummer, the rather heavy-handed Matt Sorum. Opening the album is Right Next Door to Hell, one of the best straight-ahead rocking songs of the album, and along with Perfect Crime and Back off Bitch the only one worth mentioning. The latter of them actually is one of the album's finest cuts, the rest of the elite being a lot slower in tempo, which was to become almost a rule on the subsequent GnR albums as well. Almost all the faster songs of this album and even some of the slower suffer from Axl having way too much to say in way too little time and the result is a big mess with no melody or rhythm. The horrible Garden of Eden being perhaps the worst example of this.

Most well known songs of the album are November Rain and the first song the band ever wrote together, Don't Cry. The latter is a nice ballad that has been almost killed by radio and TV overplaying it, but November Rain is still phenomenal after all these years. It was when I was listening to the finale of this epic ballad at my friend's place some eight or nine years ago when I first realized that these guys have got that something. Other high points of the album include both of the Izzy Stradlin' sung pieces, Dust N' Bones and Double Talkin' Jive, especially the latter with its brilliant instrumental outro section.

Unfortunately the rest of the album is nothing worth writing home (or MMA) about compared to the mentioned. Coma is noteworthy for being the longest GnR song ever with its 10 minutes, but well, long duration does not a good song make. Or a good album for that matter, if about 25 minutes were cut from the 76 that were pressed in the end, this could be a great record.
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