Motley Crue - Saints of Los Angeles Review
Motley Crue's hotly-anticipated new album, Saints of Los Angeles, settles any lingering question among fans/critics have been asking for the past 3 years about whether the heavy metal legends still had what it took to turn out a new studio album that could compete in the Millennium rock market like the band had in their 80s heyday 20 years earlier. With the band's smash lead-off single, 'Saints of Los Angeles' in heavy rotation on modern rock stations across the country and # 1 on Billboard's Modern Rock Singles Chart, the balance of the group's new LP is competitively catchy while still on a whole remaining pure OLD-SCHOOL Crue. This is the band's strongest and most punk-rooted album since Too Fast For Love, as highlight tracks like 'Goin' Out Swinging', 'Down at the Whiskey', 'What's It Gonna Take?', and the LP's title track demonstrate.
The LP's riffs are sharper than anything else on the market right now, the hooks infectious, making Motley Crue's new album an instructional manual for Millennium hard rock bands on how its done! Tommy Lee brings back a synergy in the group's rhythm section that was sorely missing on the under-rated 2000 New Tattoo, and each of the album's 13 songs are greatly enhanced in their energy and electricity by his return to the fold.
Vocally, Vince Neil sounds stronger than he has in years, and Mick Mars' will to return to full health after his hip-replacements prior to the band's 2005 reunion tour is definitely alive in the playing he accomplishes on this album. Always underrated, Mars should gain his due recognition with this LP as one of hard rock's most influential players, and stylistically the guitarist's riffing restores hard rock with its due respect in context of the under-appreciated musical talent of its players.
This album was talked about over the past 3 years with the kind of hype and rumor usually reserved for Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy', but Saints of Los Angeles is everything that the aforementioned surely will not be given 3/4ths of the musical dichotomy that made the band's heyday so exceptional are missing.
In Motley Crue's case, the band sounds musically tighter than they have in years, no doubt in part the result of the extensive touring the band did in 2005 and 2006 over the course of their WILDLY successful come-back tour.
Another of the great benefits that make this album so stellar is Nikki Sixx's songwriting skill, which is more precisely honed than ever. A true master of the rock writing craft, Sixx and co-writer James Michael, along collaborations with Mick Mars and Tommy Lee, make written one of Motley Crue's most consistent and dynamic rock albums of the band's career thus far... The bottom line: RUN THE F@CK OUT AND BUY THIS ALBUM!!!
Now that you have Jake's take on this CD. Keep an eye out for the second part of this tag-team.
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Motley Crue - Saints of Los Angeles
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