Ain't Life Grand

Wow! Former Guns ‘N’ Roses guitarist, Slash, has turned his back on his hard rockin’ roots and reinvented himself as a Tricky-esque creator of original sound and beatscapes par excellence.

If you believe that, take it from me that you’re easily led. Ain’t Life Grand is straight outta the Fisher Price guide to ‘How To Write A Heavy Metal Album’, which sees the former G’n’R man doing, em, exactly what he did a decade ago.

The music throughout is just too derivative of a million other blues-influenced rock acts: from the, ahem, soulful ballad, ‘Back To The Moment’, to the anthemic ‘Life’s Sweet Drug’; the bluesy stomp of ‘The Truth’ to the manic rockabilly rush of ‘The Alien’. Only the title track, with its big brassy sound, remotely manages to keep the listener’s interest but even then, Dave Lee Roth did it all ages ago.

The biggest offender lyrically is the so-bad-it’s-laughable ‘Mean Bone’: “I got one mean bone in my body/And one I wanna pick with you”. They certainly know how to woo the ladies, now, don’t they?

It’s probably unfair to compare Slash’s Snakepit to his former band, but they lack the sheer spark of ‘fuck you’ arrogance and love of controversy that made G’n’R so popular, and end up sounding like every other hard rock pub band in the world.