Slash – Apocalyptic Love
The cover art tells you that they’ll be few surprises here – a top hat astride a snake entwined Les Paul announces that Slash is a man comfortable with his own iconic status, and happy to serve it up to his fans. And serve it up he does – 13 times over – in a batch of strident blues rock tunes. ‘Apocalyptic Love’ is less varied that Slash’s debut – perhaps unsurprisingly given the presence of only one singer this time out – but it is more focussed, and a little harder. It will certainly make you smile.
There is variation in the template, however, from the bombastic blues of ‘Bad Rain’ and ‘Hard & Fast’, the hook heavy modern rock of ‘No More Heroes’ (what a chorus!) to the downright middle aged ‘We Will Roam’. Each tune is crafted around a series of Myles Kennedy’s uncanny hooks, and on the likes of ‘One Last Time’ (which features a rapid skiffle riff and melodies a plenty), the serpentine ‘Standing In The Sun’ or the meat and potatoes hard rock mule kick of first single ‘You’re a Lie’ you can see just why Slash chose to work with Mr Vesatility. But it might – ironically – have been a somewhat limiting choice. Kennedy may be easy to work and collaborate with, but I’m not sure he’s Slash’s natural foil. He is unquestionably a great composer and in possession of a tremendous set of pipes, but there is very little danger about Kennedy – you get the sense that he’s more a thinker than a rock ‘n’ roll desperado, and Slash makes music for the neck down. Consequently, these tunes lose some of their bite, their kick, and you’d never guess that this was a solo record by the gunslinger of The Most Dangerous Band In The World, unless his silhouette instantly announced it.
There might not be anything here quite as dazzling as the Kennedy/Slash tunes on the debut disc – ‘Back To Cali’ and the frankly astonishing ‘Starlight’ – but they have served us up some gems nonetheless. ‘Halo’ is a demon stomp of a song, ‘Not For Me’ is outlaw torn blues, and ‘Anastasia’ is simply joyous: a stripper beat overlaid with dazzling geetar histrionics and fuelled by some of that menace lacking elsewhere on this disc – the central riff alone smacks of a guy who show you a video of him fucking your sister and then ask you what you thought. You hope that the future will bring more of this.
As it stands, what we have here is an enjoyable summer record which deserves to be played loud. But it might not light up the sky. In some quarters this disc is being hailed as the best thing Slash has done since G’N’R – it’s not. That accolade would have to go to the sheer bloody hedonism of the second Snakepit record, ‘Ain’t Like Grand’, a record which sounded like a bunch of crack-ridden outlaws kicking the shit out of some of the most unheralded rock ‘n’ roll tunes ever written, the sort of record that would ravish 17 groupies in a row and blow a load on their faces. This one would want to cuddle after – perhaps it’s an age thing.