Credit: Found On Internet

When religious folk of a certain persuasion face a hard decision, they look down at their WWJD wristband and ask themselves, “What Would Jesus Do?”  But Rock’n’Roll is my religion, and when I’m faced with a hard decision, I instead ask: “What Would Slash Do?” Thankfully I took up this practice long after the standard answer would’ve been “inject enough heroin into my veins to kill the entire population of Luxembourg” and had returned to “rock out like a motherf*cking six-string tornado”. Which is, for the most part, what Velvet Revolver’s second album is all about.

‘Let It Roll’ is like being strapped the front fender of a Mustang being driven far too fast down the Sunset Strip by Dennis Hopper after one too many espressos. Later on, 'For A Brother' virtually winks your girlfriend into the rest room of a sleazy bar before sexing her up like a government dossier.

‘Libertad’ sounds like a band let off the leash. After proving they’re not just a gang of reputations knocking out some tunes for a hobby on ‘Contraband’, with their second record, Velvet Revolver have found they’re not stuck in the same pressure cooker this time around.

That shows in the strut of ‘Spay’, with Weiland’s sneering, almost sleazy drawl, riding the enormous riffs like a wild-eyed rodeo rider atop a bull that’s just had its testicles attacked by an industrial hammer. But there’s a flip-side to that easing of expectations, and it’s evident in the plodding by-the-numbers stuff like ‘She Builds Quick Machines’. It succeeds in making a lot of talented musicians seem very average very quickly indeed. Or ‘Can’t Get It Out Of My Head’, which is by far one of the most insipidly mawkish crimes ever committed by guitars. “Robin Hood and William Tell and Ivanhoe and Lancelot, they dont envy me”? Stop it, Scott Weiland, just stop it.

It all sounds so effortless – but also ever so slightly soulless. There isn’t the spark, the fire, the outright sense of danger that ‘Core’ had, let alone ‘Appetite For Destruction’. Rock has still gone and insisted on aging disgracefully….just in a graceful kinda way.