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Velvet Landmines
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Velvet
Revolver: Contraband
RCA, 2004
Rating: 3.5
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Posted: June 16,
2004
By
Kevin Forest Moreau
On paper, the union of Scott Weiland (Stone Temple Pilots) and Slash,
Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum from Guns N' Roses seems promising enough:
Take three members of the 1980s' most energizing hard rock band, add one
elegantly wasted front man from a second-tier "grunge"-era hitmaker, and
voila! Instant supergroup. Never mind that the workmanlike Sorum
came to Guns N' Roses from the Cult only after the ejection of firebrand
Steven Adler, or that Slash never really recaptured his slash-and-burn
peak without Izzy Stradlin to play off of. Never mind that Weiland is a
so-so singer given to nagging glam-rock affectations. Never mind any of
that: Despite the fact that half its individual members are beneficiaries
of iconic stature out of proportion to their talents or accomplishments
(Slash and perhaps McKagan being the exceptions), on paper the Velvet
Revolver equation gives hope that the sum will outstrip its parts.
Contraband, the debut result of said pairing, never does
transmute its elements into something new and exciting. Mostly, it sounds
like no more and a little less than one might expect (or hope for) from
such a union: Scott Weiland singing over some relatively crunchy Slash
guitar templates. As with, say, velvet and a revolver, Weiland's synthetic
stylings don't quite fit the rest of the band's game excursions, much the
same way that they didn't seem to fit the brawnier moments of assorted STP
albums. But that's not really a problem, because Slash, second guitarist
Dave Kushner and the others don't unleash the incendiary, boundary-busting
rock one might expect. There are no breakout solos, no wild hairpin turns
into bold new directions mid-song.
Instead, the band turns in an album that will undoubtedly play well on
MTV and Modern Rock radio. But, as was the case with the similar
supergroup
Audioslave, the album never achieves the spark the collaboration
promises. The sinewy single "Slither" comes closest, thanks to a confident
guitar riff and a remarkably non-mannered vocal from Weiland. But at best,
numbers like "Sucker Train Blues," "Set Me Free" and the earnest ballads
"Fall to Pieces" and "Loving the Alien" favorably recall Stone Temple
Pilots, which is (no offense to STP's brothers DeLeo) a waste of Slash's
guitar-god talents. (It's a bit like hiring, say, K.K. Downing and Glenn
Tipton of Judas Priest to play Eagles tunes.) Slash and company never get
Weiland to ascend to the heights they're capable of; instead, they stoop
down to his largely ordinary level.
Contraband does manage some moments of real hard-rock grit,
particularly the aforementioned "Slither," "Spectacle," the kinetic
"Headspace" (which packs a fairly passable G'n'R wallop) and the slower,
assured "Superhuman." These make up for the moments when Velvet Revolver
tries too hard to swagger into its mythic shadow (the ridiculous police
siren intro to "Sucker Train Blues," or the line "I went too fast I'm out
of luck and I don't even give a fuck" from the patronizingly titled "Do It
For the Kids") or simply commits a calculated arena-rock misstep (or the
drum-powered singalong break in "Big Machine").
So no, Contraband isn't the rock masterpiece that patient fans
of Appetite for Destruction might have been hoping for -- but then
this kind of collaboration rarely produces such a result. Neither,
however, is the album the clunker it might have been, given Weiland's
struggles with substance abuse and most of the principal members'
reputations for rock excess. Instead, it's just another reminder that as
rock supergroups go, the whole often measures up to a little bit less than
the sum of its parts.


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