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

GUNS N' ROSES — Use Your Illusion I album cover

Album · 1991 · Hard Rock

3/5 · 2010-08-05
Time Signature

Right next door to hell...

Genre: hard rock

"Use Your Illusion I" is the first part of the double-disc album that served as the long awaited follow-up to "Appetetite for Destruction". I remember feeling even more ambiguous about "Use Your Illusion" when it came out than I did about the predecessor. There are a lot of good tracks on "Use Your Illusion", but also a lot of really uninspired pompous ballads and pointless fillers. Axl's vocals are annoying as ever, but thankfully Izzy and Duff take up vocal duties on a couple of songs, and there are also guest performances by other vocalists, such as Alice Cooper himself.

Now to "Use Your Illusion I".

The opener, the dirty rocker "Right Next Door to Hell", promises an experience of unadulterated rock 'n' roll which is followed up on by the midtempo boogie rocker "Dust 'n' Bones" and the cover version of "Live and Let Die", which retains the sloppiness of the original and add a load of dirt and sleaze through the dirty guitar sound. However, things collapse completely with the first ballad of the album, the sappy "Don't Cry". Fortunately, things pick up again with the rockers "Perfect Crime", "Bad Obsession", "Back Off Bitch", and "Double Talkin' Jive", which vary in quality (note I've ignored the pointless barstool song "You Ain't the First").

What's next?

The pompuous and awful ballad "November Rain". Yes, I know a lot of people like it, and that's alright, but I think it's a total waste of time and probably one of the cheesiest things ever written by a rock band. Eech!

The next track "The Garden" is a pseudopsychedelic song, featuring Alice Cooper. This song is nothing special, but it's not bad either, and Alice Cooper, of course, makes it worth a listen. The next track "Garden of Eden" is within the same conceptual universe, carrying on the garden theme, but it's a straight up-tempo hard rocker, which, unfortunately, is packed with friggin' annouying sound effects. "Don't Damn Me" is much better, which can also be said about "Bad Apples" and "Dead Horse". But "Coma", forget about it - it's meant to be weird, I know, but its basically ten wasted minutes.

"Use Your Illusion I" contains a lot of aggressive hard rockers of variying quality, and it's really these tracks that make the album worthwhile. The lyrics are mostly just as stupid and childish as on "Appetite for Destruction", so they're best off ignored.

I think that fans of hard rock and traditional metal will like this album, but - ignorring the ballads - the songs may be a bit to dirty and hard edged for fans of glam, hair, and pop metal.

more than 2 years ago
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Time Signature wrote:

more than 2 years ago

I don't really loathe them, but I certainly don't like most of the GnR ballads on the "Illusion" albums - that's true.

Pekka wrote:

more than 2 years ago

It's interesting to read both our Illusion reviews as we come from completely different places, me being a GnR ballad lover and you seem to loathe them with passion :P