Libertad review

Two albums in three years

As is generally known Guns'N'Roses released their last album 14 years ago – and this is not just huge time gap but fatally dangerous if one may put that way. Therefore a thought that Guns'N'Roses have passed away long time ago sounds quite natural. But in reality the band is alive and even is engaged in some activities. Axl Rose is the only original member nowadays and during at list 8 years he stubbornly tries to release the sixth album of Guns'N'Roses and continually feeds the audience with promises, which he immediately disclaims. In a word, it all looks pretty obscurely: what is going on in the band's camp, why Rose doesn't like the idea of solo career? – the answers stay beyond understanding. However, at the same time his ex-band-mates display quite a peppy musical activity. In the year of 2002 Slash, Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum decided to form a new band and recruited guitarist Dave Kushner and ex-singer of Stone Temple Pilots Scott Weiland to complete a full lineup. Slash suggested the name Revolver and Weiland suggested the addition of Black Velvet to the title. Everybody thought that this sounded too similar to Stone Temple Pilots, so the name was shortened to simply Velvet Revolver. The first album of a newly born supergroup was released in 2004 and received immediate success, the number of sold copies exceeds two millions in US only. So Velvet Revolver look like real saviors of the genre, which experiences hard times nowadays and really needs some support. Of course, you may count on Axl but it will be much more reasonable to pay attention on his ex-colleagues. This year Velvet Revolver add another point to the general score and double the output with their new album Libertad.

Good proportion of musical components

The most important fact about new album is that Libertad sounds simply better than the debut record. Yes, the audience accepted Contraband with enthusiasm but at the same time the album engendered lots of skepticism and some distrust to the band's members, First of all because it all looked like a temporary project and secondly, the band obviously suffered lack of musical uniqueness. It was interesting to listen but the seams that joined hard'n'heavy of Guns'N'Roses with hazy melodies of Stone Temple Pilots looked too appreciable. But luckily Velvet Revolver not only passed the time test, that is simply didn’t breakup, but also managed to achieve obvious growth as a separate band. The musicians stepped on the same ground and finally managed to find a good proportion of components to create their unique and attractive sounding. The album's stylistic refers to good old hard rock – the guitars gnash, bass roars and drums rumble. Wailand in his turn performs pretty interesting melodies, which greatly fit in with the context and add a good share of originality and freshness. In a word, they have found a proper balance between vocal peculiarities of Wailand and the band itself.

Hard rock audience will be pleased

The album offers a pretty strong selection of tracks. Basically these are explosive and vigorous songs with uncomplicated but interesting riffs and structures. The first three songs comprise a perfect start for the album. Everything sounds powerful, solid and extremely attractive. A speedy, punk rock track Let It Roll serves as ideal sonic bait, the song is simple but enormously catchy. She Mine sounds quite unusual yet no less interesting. The album's unofficial single Get Out The Door is one of the best songs here - heavy, memorable and fresh. This trio represents so to say the "meat" of the album, so if you want to take in this album by separate tracks than these songs will serve as the most appropriate ones. Just Sixteen may be referred here too – this is also quite characteristic and interesting track. Singles represent another side of the album. These songs carry a little bit different character; they have less aggression and more feelings. Particularly She Builds Quick Machines has both heavy riffing and relaxing arrangements. The Last Fight is an unhurried rock song that could be first ballad here but actually it only borders this type of the songs. Overall the entire album comes in easy and nice and it is very pleasant to see the compromise that musicians of Velvet Revolver have found. The small parts of their former bands shine through here and there but they never clash with each other, quite on the contrary they assemble into something new. It is hard to say that Libertad is a ground shacking album but the hard rock audience will be definitely pleased with it.