GUNS N' ROSES — Use Your Illusion II (review)

GUNS N' ROSES — Use Your Illusion II album cover Album · 1991 · Hard Rock Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Pekka
Part 2 of the "We're the biggest rock band in the world, we can do what we want" album of Guns N' Roses. Usually when a band decides to split the overpouring material onto two albums, the first one gets the gems and the less than stellar material is saved for the second release, but this time things are different.

Steven Adler managed to record only one drum track for the entire double album before being kicked out for excessive drug usage, and legend says that that one track was glued together from 60 different takes. What that track was used for, though, might just be the finest GnR song ever recorded: Civil War, an atmospheric, heavy ballad mainly about power and greed. Another epic ballad that belongs among the finest tunes of the album is Estranged, penned by Axl Rose but owing much of its greatness, as the liner notes of the album say, to Slash's "killer guitar melodies".

More rocking highlights mainly include the bondage anthem Pretty Tied Up, the epic powerhouse called Locomotive and the brilliant You Could Be Mine. The style and feel of the album is very much similar to Illusion I, only the highlights are higher and the "filler" tracks fuller. The only real let down is the end of the album, with a redundantly re-lyricized Don't Cry and the hideous electronica experiment My World, which Axl wrote and recorded while "on mushrooms" and Slash apparently became aware of when he was listening to the finished album for the first time.

This album with its counterpart shows that GnR had ambition way beyond the basic riff rock format. Sometimes they pull it off wonderfully, sometimes less. On this album most of the time wonderfully.
Share this review
more

Review Comments

Post a public comment below | Send private message to the reviewer
Please login to post a shout
No shouts posted yet. Be the first member to do so above!

Review Index

Member Zone

Username:
Password:
Stay signed in

Metal Subgenres

Artists Alpha-index

MMA TOP 5 Metal ALBUMS

Rating by members, ranked by custom algorithm
Albums with 30 ratings and more
Master of Puppets Thrash Metal
METALLICA
Buy this album from our partners
Paranoid Heavy Metal
BLACK SABBATH
Buy this album from our partners
Moving Pictures Hard Rock
RUSH
Buy this album from our partners
Powerslave NWoBHM
IRON MAIDEN
Buy this album from our partners
Rising Heavy Metal
RAINBOW
Buy this album from our partners

New Metal Artists

New Metal Releases

Lysergic Ritual Sludge Metal
SUNDOWNER
Buy this album from MMA partners
Terra Preta Sludge Metal
TITANOBOA
Buy this album from MMA partners
Endless Suffering Sludge Metal
LØV
Buy this album from MMA partners
Beyond The Shed Sludge Metal
SINICYST
Buy this album from MMA partners
Being & Nothing EP Sludge Metal
CEREBRAL TOMB
Buy this album from MMA partners
More new releases

New Metal Online Videos

Agremorta - Adrocitas (Official Lyric Video)
AGREMORTA
Bosh66· 21 hours ago
Agremorta - Ploratus Umbra (Official Lyric Video)
AGREMORTA
Bosh66· 21 hours ago
Agremorta - Vertex Membrana (Official Lyric Video)
AGREMORTA
Bosh66· 21 hours ago
HAIL SPIRIT NOIR - The Temple Of Curved Space (Official Track Stream)
HAIL SPIRIT NOIR
adg211288· 1 day ago
In Sulfur - The Gate (OFFICIAL VIDEO) 2022
IN SULFUR
Bosh66· 1 day ago
More videos

New MMA Metal Forum Topics

More in the forums

New Site interactions

More...

Latest Metal News

members-submitted

More in the forums

Social Media

Follow us
Follow us on Twitter Become a Facebook fan RSS Feed