Guns N' Roses
Appetite For Destruction

Most of the so-called "rock n' roll people" describe "Appetite For Destruction," the debut album of Guns N' Roses, as the band's masterpiece and the consecration of the street-rock movement that raged in the late '80s and began to die out in the early '90s.

In my opinion as a rock music listener (I want to make it clear that I don't consider myself some kind of expert to criticize Guns N' Roses, but I'm simply a Mr. Nobody), these twelve songs are neither excellent nor do they represent the pinnacle of the street-something, because they seem to me like 12 decent rip-offs of Motley Crue, Kiss, and Aerosmith's hard rock with the catchiness of the Rolling Stones, and I could continue by mentioning the less fortunate (in terms of sales and popularity) L.A. Guns (led by Tracy Guns, co-founder of GNR) who have the same offering, but express it much better, or the Hanoi Rocks. Rip-offs played by 4 ugly jailbird faces and a singer, oh no, it's a singer, right... you get confused, you know... who doesn't differ much from the voice of a willing prostitute or a whiny child, a singer whom many praise as the true and last rockstar, meh... I still don't understand what you find in that boor who was handed a microphone one day.

The album opens with one of its truly original pieces "Welcome To The Jungle", very catchy but quite stirring, especially for the nice guitar passages by Slash (the only really "good" one in the formation) and for the variations of the main theme. Punk n' roll halfway between Motley Crue and Sex Pistols is "It’s So Easy", again great catchiness, but much less power, due to the vocal lines halfway between raucous and melodic. "Nightrain" is another classic piece loved by fans; to me, it seems like a very predictable piece regarding riff, solo, and core structure. "Out To Get Me" and "Mr. Brownstone" are other simple rock n' roll pieces with really elementary drum lines and horrendous vocals, but they give way to another good piece "Paradise City", here the works of Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones are grafted, good solos this time, after the first minute the rhythm becomes more pressing and the song concludes very raucous, but quite beautiful. "My Michelle" is another classic also listenable, which in my opinion owes a lot to Kiss, but again Axl Rose doesn't fare well, horrible voice.

"Think About You" feels like filler to me, because it's very simple and lacks bite, it's followed by the very slick but enjoyable "Sweet Child O' Mine", Rose, more restrained and much less raucous, puts the cherry on top of what I consider the best and most listenable song of the entire batch, beautiful both in riffs, drum lines, and solo. Another punk n' roll piece is "You Are Crazy", but again bad vocals, the rhythm becomes engaging and matches Rose's poor work. Scandalous "Anything Goes", the more I hear it, the more I want to give 2 stars to this thing, but "Rocket Queen" makes me rethink, it's a beautiful song, it reminds me a little (bit bit bit) of Zeppelin.

Know that "Appetite For Destruction" barely made it to sufficiency because really Axl Rose sucks as a singer, but the others are quite good (Slash, however, stands out from his colleagues) and all in all, there are good songs in the album, but it's much less beautiful than what is said around, let alone consecration and masterpiece, here we are faced with a decent disk, which at first listen might seem like a masterpiece but then one realizes the lack of originality roaming in these 12 very simple rock tracks.