Use Your Illusion I (Guns N' Roses)

The original line-up of Guns N' Roses

I think most of us know who Guns N' Roses are, and if you don't, get your head out of that rock, and let's go through a brief history lesson of GNR. What Guns N' Roses are probably most known for to people are three particular singles. Welcome To The Jungle, Sweet Child O' Mine, and Paradise City. Those song names ring any bells? Well they should, and these songs came from what's probably their most known album, and possibly the greatest deput album in rock n' roll history, Appetite for Destruction. The formation that was responsible for the creation of this album was made up of Steven Adler(drummer), Duff McKagan(bassist and backing vocalist), Izzy Stradlin (rhythm guitarist, backing vocalist, occasional co-lead guitarist and percussionist), Saul 'Slash' Hudson (lead guitar, occasional co-rhythm guitarist, and talkbox), and W. Axl Rose (lead vocalist, percussionist, synthesizer, and whistle). I am proud to say that I do own the actual album on CD. After Appetite for Destruction, it took at least four years for the band to make a proper follow-up to the album, with only Lies being released in that four year time frame(Lies was an EP released with four more new songs from the group). The official follow-up album to Appetite For Destruction became not one, but two albums. Use Your Illusion I, which I will be reviewing today, and Use Your Illusion II, which I will probably review some time in the future. Before I decided to buy the album last night and listen to it today, I noticed the people on iTunes say that it is definitely noticeable that there are tensions between Slash, Izzy, and Axl. On one side, you have the guitarists, trying to keep the band closer to their hard rock roots, while you have Axl on the other trying to do something different with influences like Queen and Elton John. I was a little worried at first that these tensions might ruin the album, but then I decided to just buy it and give it a listen and give you my thoughts in a review today. So is it a truly great album like their deput, or is it an illusion of what could have been? Well, why don't we start this review now and find out.

As usual, I'm going to start off with the musical quality of this album, and believe it or not, I like these songs better than the songs on Appetite For Destruction(be warned, I may make a lot of comparisons between this album and the one before it). Don't get me wrong, Appetite definitely has quite a few great songs of its own, but this album definitely has better quality songs, and in a greater quantity as well, but I digress. This album has some of the best hard rock songs I have ever heard, like Right Next Door To Hell, Perfect Crime, and Garden Of Eden, not to mention they also have two outstanding epics, November Rain, and Coma. However, and I really wish I didn't have to take a point off for this, not all of the music on this album is original, because of the fact that they decided to record a cover of Paul McCartney's Live and Let Die for this album, which forces me to take some points off, however, because it was actually a pretty good cover, I'll only take half a point off for it. I really don't think there's anything else to comment on in terms of this album other then the fact they also try some new styles of music out, for example, in Dust N' Bones, it's style and sound gives off a feel that makes me feel like I should go to some bar in a cowboy movie, and in You Ain't The First, they try to do another acoustic song, like the song Patience on their release Lies, and it really works out well, and these songs turn out to be pretty great songs. So all in all, this aspect of the album get's a 3.5/4.

Now we're going to look at the lyrical quality of this album, and there are surpsingly some pretty damn great lyrics on this album, both on the hard rock songs, the Queen styled songs and the experimental songs. Why surprisingly? Well when I noticed one of the songs was called Back Off Bitch, I was expecting the lyrics to be more "immature" than the lyrics on Appetite For Destruction, but I was most definitely wrong. On the song I just mentioned, there's actually some pretty good lyrics. For example, take a look at this lyric from the song.

You better back off, back off bitch, face of an angel with the love of a witch,

Read that lyric and don't tell me it's not just awesome, but relatable. I mean, if you're a guy, who doesn't know what it's like to talk to girl because she seemed and looked nice at first, but then when you got to know her she turned out to be a total bitch. I think the majority of you guys reading this review know what that's like. As for the girls, well, both guys and girls can relate to the lyrics of November Rain that describe going through rough times of a relationship. So I really don't know what else to say other than that these lyrics are pretty damn awesome, but again, Guns N' Roses didn't write the lyrics to Live and Let Die, but again, the cover was done pretty well, so I'll only take a half point off, therefore getting this album a 2.5/3 on lyrics.

Lastly we come to how well these songs and believe it or not, despite some criticisms that I heard were given on this aspect, they actually fit pretty well together, however I will admit that there are some times where they don't. For example, it just really catches me off guard whenever I hear Live and Let Die right after Dust N' Bones. You could call that a good thing about this album, because you can tell even more that a new song has begun, but if you want to fit two songs that are almost completely different from each other together, either create a segue, or just put more seconds of silence between the songs. For this case, I would just put more seconds of silence between them. Another prominent example I can think of where this occurs is the space between Double Talkin' Jive and November Rain. On one hand you have a very loud and edgy hard rock song, and on the other, you have a nine minute soft rock epic (at least until the outro). You would think that because of how enormously different from each other they are, it would be worse, but believe it or not, it's actually better. Why you may ask? Well I think this is all because of the acoustic/classical guitar outro that can be found at the end of Double Talkin' Jive that you hear before the song begins to fade out, but I digress. My point is that these songs actually do fit pretty well together, with some exceptions, so this aspect of the album get's a 2/3.

So we now come to the end of the review where I add up the points and say any more comments I have relating to the album. In terms of musical quality, this album get's a 3.5/4 with that half point being taken off because although Guns N' Roses covered Live and Let Die wonderfully, it is still a cover, which means I had to take some kind of points off the album for not being entirely original. Lyrically, this get's a 2.5/3, with a half point being taken off again only because of Live and Let Die being a cover, and in terms of how well the album functions as a whole, it get's a 2/3 because the songs do fit pretty well besides what some critics may say, with some exceptions. Which get's this album an 8 out of 10. Again, this album is a wonderful album besides the very few flaws I found with it, so go get it if you're a hard rock fan, or a Queen or Elton John fan, or, if you like an album with a variety of styles, go get it. Well that's all I have to say on this album, I'll see you guys whenever I do another one of these reviews. Bye!

One-X (Three Days Grace)

Three Days Graces current line-up

Hey, welcome to another one of my blog posts, where as usual, I'm doing another album review now, and today, if you couldn't tell by the title, we're going to review the album One-X, made by the band Three Days Grace, a Canadian alternative rock band that was formed in 1997. However, originally, the band was named Groundswell when it was really first formed in 1992 with this title, but the band broke up in late 1995 for unknown reasons. Then the band regrouped in 1997 with their current name, Three Days Grace, and with a line up of Adam Gontier on guitar and vocals, drummer and backing vocalist Neil Sanderson, and a bassist with the name of Brad Walst. This line-up through their entire 15 year career, has only gone through one major change, which was recruiting a lead guitarist with the name of Barry Stock in 2003, but let's go back a little before then shall we? The original trio that made up the band once met up with local producer Gavin Brown in Toronto. The band gave Brown several years of material ever since regrouping, and he picked out what he called 'the golden nuggets', according to Gontier. The band and Brown cleaned up the songs and polished them into a demo album which they then sent to EMI Music Publishing Canada. The label wanted to hear more material, so with Brown producing, created what would become the bands first single, "I Hate Everything About You". It attracted the interest of several record labels, and eventually, the band was signed to Jive Records after being sought out by the companies president. Once on Jive Records, the band made their eponymous deput album, and to support it, released their deput single which I mentioned earlier in this review, "I Hate Everything About You", which was being labelled as their breakout hit. After recruiting lead guitarist Barry Scott, the band went on tour continuously and extensively for nearly two years in support of this deput. The band also released two more singles from the album, which were "Home" and "Just Like You", but around this time, lead singer Adam Gontier developed an addiction to the prescription painkiller, OxyContin. After the bands tour ended, they knew they couldn't go on with Gontier's condition, so in 2005, with the support of friends, family, and his fellow band members, Gontier checked himself into the CAMH (Centre for Addiction and Mental Help). Gontier being in depression during his time in rehabilitation, decided to begin writing lyrics for songs about how he felt, and what he went through in the CAMH. Once he had successfully completed treatment, the band unanimously agreed that peace and tranquillity would be necessary to complete work on their sophomore album, which would come to be known as the album I'm going to review today, One-X. The album was released during June of 2006 and met mostly positive reviews from critics, one of them being community website Ultimate Guitar. What do I think of the album though? Well, let's get started on finding that out shall we?

Ok, I'm going to make something clear at the beginning of this review of musical quality. I actually REALLY ENJOY THIS ALBUM, however, there are some faults that I can find with it, most of them relating to the major flaw of this album. It can get really bland and boring at times. There isn't really anything about the album that makes it stand out for years and years to come, unless you're maybe a fan of the group. Most of the songs just follow a typical verse chorus verse chorus bridge chorus format. It isn't really anything new and never been done before. Another thing that's just boring and bland about the album is how mediocre the guitar solos are, at least when there are any. For example, in the first track of the album It's All Over, the song is just starting to build up to the guitar solo at what I think is the end of the second chorus, and you're hoping for something awesome, and you just get this mediocre slowish solo, which to me, is a total disappointment seeing as that's one of my favourite tracks on the album. Looking past these flaws though, the musical quality of these songs is still pretty high in my opinion, so I'm going to give it a 3/4 in musical quality.

Next up, we have the lyrical quality, and it was pretty much just what I was expecting, and what was I expecting? Lot's of repetition. I get that this albums lyrics was written by someone who had just come out of rehab, but he could have tried some more topics other then just the typical, "I hate what I've become stuff", and because of this repetition, this albums lyrical quality again suffers from being bland and boring after a while. Again though, the lyrical quality is still pretty good, so I'm just going to give it a 2/3.

Lastly, we get to how well all of the songs fit together, and I don't think anyone will be surpised by this, but they fit very well together. This is probably caused by the fact that most of these songs are about the same thing, but if its broken, don't fix it right? So this category definetely gets a 3/3.

So let's get to the final verdict shall we? So we have a 3/4 in musical quality, a 2/3 in lyrical quality, and a 3/3 in how well the songs fit together. In total, this adds up to an 8/10, which means this album is a pretty good album. The only reason this album suffers is that its really repeditive and can get boring some times, however, this doesn't make the album bad. It is a really awesome collection of tracks, repeditiveness and all, and maybe that repeditiveness made the tracks fit better together, I don't know. My point is tht if you're a Three Days Grace fan, or just a modern rock or metal fan in general, go grab this album, it is a pretty good buy despite the repetition, and that's it! I'll see you guys later!

P.S. Sorry this review took a while, procrastination issues that I have to deal with. Anyways, now it's really the end, bye!