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Rating: The L.A. Guns only brushed success, especially at the dawn of their career, with their first two albums.
The first, self-titled album, built on a dangerous and urban street metal, remains perhaps their best legacy, while with the second, "Cocked And Loaded", they truly tasted glory thanks to the single "The Ballad Of Jayne".
After a sensational misstep with the third album "Hollywood Vampires", the group found themselves in a musical purgatory in the midst of the early '90s grunge storm, truly risking implosion.
The leader and guitarist Tracii Guns (who had really brushed success, entering and exiting the Guns N' Roses during the fetal period before being replaced by Slash) left the band before entering the studio for this "Vicious Circle", only to return once the record label threatened legal retaliation for contractual non-compliance.
From here the idea for the title was born: a "vicious circle" in which a forced attempt at change leads back to the starting point.
With these negative premises, it could have been a disaster, but despite the many slatings present online and in various industry magazines, not everything is to be discarded, and in the end, much is to be saved.
Certainly, the quantity of tracks (fifteen) weighs down the final result, and "Who's In Control (Let 'Em Roll)" and "I'm The One" could easily have been sacrificed, as well as the presence of the albeit memorable ballad "Crystal Eyes", retrieved from the previous album as a bonus track, just fills time.
The rest, however, is a concentrate of compelling and winning tracks, where the street component dominates, repeatedly tainted by multiple blues nuances.
Fast tracks constantly alternate with ballads or mid-tempos.
The former are often killer tracks with an urgency that borders on punk-metal in the Motorhead style ("No Crime"), even overflowing into thrash-metal with "Killing Machine" and the lyrically silly "Kill That Girl".
Let's not forget the presence of some grunge clumps, especially in the opener "Face Down", an unavoidable aspect in many works released during the reign of flannel shirts by bands that had little or nothing to do with that musical style.
The soft moments and mid-tempos instead have a hidden blues soul among the instruments, whose spectrum stands out on the Ten Years After cover "I'd Love To Change The World" and in the frenetic rock-blues of "Nothing Better To Do".
Then when the album finishes with "Kiss Of Death" (their "November Rain"), its absolute peak, the desire arrives to restart listening and get lost in the vicious circle along with the guns of Los Angeles.
Tracklist
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