Metal Monday

Slash and burn: former Gunner’s solo album scorches

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SLASH / Apocalyptic Love (Universal)

MUSIC fans may well wonder why a band like Guns N’ Roses gets inducted in to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, when the lineup that made them famous hasn’t played together in roughly 20 years.

Then you hear what just one of them can do on an album like Apocalyptic Love.

Founding GNR guitarist Slash’s riffs and solos are as nimble as ever, and crackle with the energy of a musician still out to top everything he’s done before.

Slash’s second solo album kicks into high gear with “Standing in the Sun,” a melodic thumper full of the electric boogie that made GNR classic “Paradise City” such a crowd-pleaser. “Halo” boils over with sharp hooks and blistering lead guitar, and “We Will Roam” chugs along with radio-friendly riffs and an anthemic chorus.

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More than the sum of their parts

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Kiss / Sonic Boom (KISS Records/Universal)

Ace Frehley / Anomaly (Bronx Man)

OLD dogs may not learn new tricks, but they can master the ones they know.

Take Kiss. After repackaging and recycling their prime 1970s material on gratuitous “best of” collections and multiple tours for the last 13 years, founding members Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley — joined by drummer Eric Singer and guitarist Tommy Thayer — finally return with the band’s first full-length studio album since 1998.

The results are mixed.

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Duff knows his stuff

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Duff McKagan’s Loaded / The Taking (Armoury/Eagle Rock)

It’s not easy to live down multi-platinum success, but every former member of Guns N’ Roses has to do it.

Seattle native and founding GNR bassist Duff McKagan has given it his best shot over the years, forming Loaded in 1999 and joining fellow ex-Gunners Matt Sorum and Slash in Velvet Revolver in 2004. Fans that have followed him from project to project will be pleased to know The Taking is actually good.

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Bach for more

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Sebastian Bach: Kicking and Screaming (Frontiers/EMI)

After being the charismatic frontman for Skid Row in the later wave of hair metal circa 1989-91, Sebastian Bach has kept busy touring, but largely off the radar of current rock music. It’s a welcome surprise, then, that his latest solo effort has plenty of punch. The title track is hook-heavy and throws a deep thrash groove against Bach’s distinct howl-and-growl. Fans of Slave to the Grind-era Skid Row will not be disappointed.

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Perfect for grade eight shops class

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Ratt: Infestation (Roadrunner/Loud & Proud)

Ratt has never been “cool,” but if you were in junior high in the mid-1980s, you can probably remember when they were “awesome.” After a couple of decades in the musical wilderness, the band — original members Stephen Pearcy, Warren DeMartini and Bobby Blotzer, at least — returns with a new slab of glam metal that could have come right out of 1986.

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Nikki, I think we’ve heard this one before

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Nikki Sixx is far from the only rock star to chronicle his former excesses, but he’s one of few to have had a viable career after being medically dead.

I read Mötley Crüe’s The Dirt about a year or two after it came out and it is a flat-out great read, even for someone who, like me, followed the shenanigans of Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil, Tommy Lee and Mick Mars when they were high atop the metal heap in the 1980s. Back then I read  Hit Parader, Circus, even Groove (I only bought a copy in the summer of ’87 because it had the Crüe on the cover and I wanted to read about Girls, Girls, Girls, which I hadn’t bought yet… the magazine was pretty terrible) and repeatedly watched an interview Nikki did with Paul McGrath of CBC’s The Journal, which I taped on Betamax. I even bought the VH1 Behind the Music feature on them in 199something. I thought I was well versed in what they were up to.

Boy, was I wrong.

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