Music Review: Appitite for Death by Guns N' Roses

(Note: I view it might be interesting to re-listen to classic albums and refresh them in the setting of how good they keep up today.First in a series.)

I first purchased Appetite for Death on cassette back in 1988; I think a schoolmate of mine showing me the cover art and I view it looked chill and so a day or so after I caught the picture for "Welcome to the Jungle" and I was blown away.

ot my mom to take me to the book store so I could buy the record the following day and was so captivated by it that I played it in my Sunday School year as an exemplar of something I establish to be awesome.Yeah, I'm not certain how that came to happen).

It wasn't too much after that GNR blew up big time and everybody loved them, etc. etc.

So how does the album hold up 20 days later?

My first picture is that the overall production values are fairly low.the album in general sounds flat and I'm sure that's for right reason: it was recorded on a shoestring budget, nobody at the time realizing how big the ring would get.

Appitite kicks off with the autobiographical "Welcome to the Jungle", which is undeniably one of the heavy album-openers in history but has missed a lot of its punch over the years due to being played in every football stadium in America for the preceding decade. (Funny note: Axl claimed that when he got off the bus for the start sentence in Los Angeles an old black guy told him, "You're in the Jungle, baby.you're gonna die! ) "It's So Easy" introduces us to Deep Voice Axl (at the sentence I wondered at first if another extremity of the circle was singing) where he complains, in a very rock-n-roll kind of way getting laid has lost some of its fun due to the want of challenge."Night Train" is next, a nice track about not just getting drunk on cheap wine but learned that you'll regret it later, while "Out Ta Get Me" is a decent rocker about being paranoid which likely was an exact figure of how Axl was look at the time."Mr. Brownstone" is a cunning look at heroin addiction which features some of the best lyrics on the record("I used to do a small but a little wasn't doing so the little go more and more.", etc)

Side one ends with the album's second masterpiece, the sprawling "Paradise City" which features an extended outro jam that lets Slash go mad with a masterful extended solo.The video for "Paradise" turned out to be possibly the best "concert montage" style picture of the metal area, with the band performing in presence of massive outdoor crowds while Axl dances about like a madman (probably because he was a madman).I sort of girl the years when albums had sides because there actually was an art to pick the best song to end the low side, which "Paradise" does perfectly.

The 2nd half of Appetite kicks off with "My Michelle", a forgettable song about one of the countless lost young people hanging out in Los Angeles and moves on to "Think About You", a listenable tune that illustrates how still the filler on this album is not all bad.

"Sweet Child of Mine" is next, the third classic single to descend from Appetite and maybe the best power balled of the 80's.Slash steals the present here, from the song's trademark intro to the two beautiful solos and eventually the amazing coda.A complete song, really, and one that has not grown stale with repeated listenings (most recently Fergie's lame rendition at the Super Bowl).

"You're Mad" and "Anything Goes" are fairly indistinguishable (G'NR later did a more interesting aucoustic version of the former) and while neither are terrible I get the belief that either could have been left off the album.Appetite finshes up with "Rocket Queen, a bittersweet tune about a daughter the band knew and features both the sounds of Axl having sex with drummer Steve Adler's girlfriend and a tender final verse that Rose described as "a promise and friendship note at the end of the song".

Appetite for End on the whole holds up jolly well, despite the sub-par production the band sounds great, managing to get across as well-rehearsed but raw; the songs are well-crafted and intelligently written, funny at times and tragic at others.Most importantly, Appetite captures what it felt like to be in a lot during the 80's L.A. metal era and is one of the most authentic discs in rock history as the listener never has cause to question that songwriters Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin are writing strictly from experience.

Overall rating; 8 out of 10.My only complaints are that the good quality could have been better and that the album runs a bit long and could have been tightened up by maybe dropping some combination of "My Michelle", "Out Ta Get Me", or "Anything Goes".It'sa keeper, though, probably the better influence to get out of the 80's hair metal scene.