Rock you till end: Velvet Revolver

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Easy Guitar Tabs Velvet Revolver

The debut album by these refugees from hard-rock superstars Guns n' Roses and '90s alt-rock combo Stone Temple Pilots is a rare, fine thing: the sound of the perfect A&R sales pitch turning into a real band. In fact, Contraband is tighter and hotter in construction and attack than you have any right to expect from a group that started out auditioning vocalists at the end of 2002 while being filmed for a VH1 reality show. The ex-G n' R trio of guitarist Slash, bassist Duff McKagan and drummer Matt Sorum, plus former STP singer Scott Weiland (who joined in June 2003) are not shy about flashing their pedigree on this snarling update of '80s Sunset Strip classicism. "Sucker Train Blues" opens the album like G n' R's Appetite for Destruction in miniature -- zooming underwater bass, pneumatic gallop, flying chunks of superfuzz guitar -- while Weiland pulls out his police bullhorn–style bark from STP's "Sex Type Thing." But Velvet Revolver (with Dave Kushner, ex–Wasted Youth, on second guitar) energize their combined histories with original snort, like the skewed skittering riff in "Set Me Free," and punchy vocal choruses that sound like dirty Def Leppard.

Weiland, in particular, shows that he is far more than the sum of his well-publicized drug problems and rehab stints during his STP years. Lyrically, he nails the sweet selfish oblivion and dumb-ass self-destruction of addiction with explosive clarity and no excuses. And Weiland's grainy yowl -- which, at STP's height, earned him a lot of lazy, cruel comparisons to Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder -- is actually a precision instrument that cuts through the double guitar crossfire with a steely melodic purpose that, when Weiland piles up the harmonies, sounds like sour, seething Queen.