Slash Feat. Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators
Apocalyptic Love

True survivor of rock excesses (he didn't miss out on anything: alcohol, drugs, life-threatening heart conditions, cigarettes one after the other), the almost fifty-year-old Soul Hudson, known as Slash, has now calmed down considerably, having given up the bottle five years ago and more recently also tobacco, after witnessing his mother die of lung cancer.

However, two things remain unchanged since the first day we got to know him: the first is his incomparable swagger, with that true pirate smirk and worldly kid vibe (an incredibly English and white father and an African-American mother)... true, the infamous cigarette dangling from his Afro-lips is missing, but, as said, the excesses are over.

The second constant is the phenomenal, beastly energy that characterizes and elevates his guitar talent to an extraordinary level. Slash hasn't invented anything new on the instrument; he's a legitimate child of Jimmy Page and '70s guitar playing, but the fury, power, effectiveness, the "kick" with which he approaches (or rather rides, devours, kicks) his Gibson Les Paul Standard are unmatched. Many of his fellow musicians know this well (even people from other worlds like Carole King, or back in the day Michael Jackson, and let's not even mention the unpresentable Vasco Rossi) who have hired him to embellish some of their songs and/or enliven some of their concerts.

In this album, the producer has managed to best capture the deadly and unique attack of the curly Anglo-American musician: his guitar track is consistently placed three-quarters on the right channel and remains there even when it's time for a solo, just a pedal to press and off we go. The recording is constantly captured live in the studio, with all the musicians playing together, including the solos but also the returns, the whistles, the raspberries, and the small resonances. Almost no overdubs... on the other channel, there is the backing rhythm guitar of singer Myles Kennedy who, although skilled and present, inevitably transmits half the punch of Slash's guitar.

However, Myles makes up for it with his singing: he is undoubtedly the heavy metal voice of the decade, carried by the growing success of his band Alter Bridge. Here with Slash, the matter shifts from metal to (very hard) rock, but Kennedy certainly has no trouble converting the epic and sometimes melancholic mood that he loves to maintain with his group into something more streetwise and scrappy. His switch to the higher octave between verses is always remarkable... the man has no problem singing loud and strong on notes unimaginable to most.

Good old Myles reached success late, after a long apprenticeship (he's only four years younger than Slash), but he deserves it all. The guitarist asks him to overdo it a little more than he's used to with his regular band, and he performs, surmounting the deadly chaos of the four instruments (besides them, there are the lesser-known Brent Fitz on drums and Todd Kerns on bass) with disarming power and expressiveness.

Among the twelve songs present, my preferences go to "One Last Thrill", three minutes of adrenaline-pumping rock 'n' roll blasted out, then the more laid-back "We Will Roam", where I can see Kennedy's compositional style even on guitar, and more, the more complex "Anastasia", which begins with a Bach-like symph-rock cadence in the Malmsteen (or Blackmore, if you will) style that resolves into a vigorous riff and then opens into the singing, recycling these three sections multiple times and extending into an expansive, overflowing solo by Mr. Hudson.

My favorite is still "Far and Away", a blues ballad with Kennedy singing the verses over a minor arpeggio à la Lynyrd Skynyrd and then opening into an invaluable chorus, oscillating between major and minor keys, full of feeling and healthy vibes.

This second album under the name Slash is then a festival of vintage heavy and "analog" rock blues music, just like if we were in 1973, if not for the much greater dynamics and mastering possible today, but when there's heart (and there's plenty), nothing else is needed to enjoy listening fully.