Appetite for Destruction

Now that's some *premium* boomer rock!! 🔥🔥
Even if my first reflex is to hate it, some songs have a secret sauce that I can't help but rock out to.......

Standouts: My Michelle • Sweet Child O' Mine • Anything Goes

Great album with classic songs

Absolute banger

Grumpy Aerosmith. Or America's Oasis. They serve up regurgitated mashed up comfortable and easily identified rehashes of obvious pre-80s reference points but undeniably have some big tunes.

It's a shame this came out just as the CD era had hit full swing. If it had come out in the vinyl era they likely would have trimmed the fat and lost some of really ropey filler.

The anthems of a generation. The precursor to grunge. The best parts of hair band rock. Interesting arrangements and musicianship. Easily more than half of these songs are legitimately great and a front to back listen is required. 5

Here’s my take: “Sweet Child O’ Mine” is one of the greatest rock songs of the 80s, and “Welcome to the Jungle” is a 10/10 introduction to a band. Beyond that, the album is fine, but fairly run-of-the-mill Van Halen-styled heavy metal. Yet those two tracks buoy the rest of the album, deservedly so.

-I don't like this band at all, but I understand why a lot of people do. They were able to transform the Sunset Strip sound (e.g. Crue, Poison, etc) into something a little less plastic. If the major labels never gobbled up the underground (i.e. Nirvana), this probably would have been the dominant sound of the early 90s and we would have seen a million photocopies. Thank G-d that didn't really happen.

-Every song is an extremely competent stylistic impression of Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Van Halen, AC/DC, Ted Nugent, and/or ZZ Top. There's also a good dose of quasi-Stones/Dolls riffs played through a heavy metal rig.

-Axl does his thing, which is really fucking annoying to me.

-The guitars are mixed so loud it's like the amp is right next to my ears. Especially Slash's guitar, which is like a 2nd lead vocal on most songs.

3.42

Paradise City is de meest overbodige plaat uit de geschiedenis en de rest van deze nummers is helaas niet veel beter.

Pure shit. Normally I could just sit here in silence but I actually have to listen to something good now to cleanse my brain.

I had high hopes for this album that weren't met. The hits from this record are timeless, and can really display G&R peak lyrical and musical abilities (Sweet Child of Mine is the clearest standout) but so many other tracks are mindless, poorly written or just bloat the runtime. If this was a 35 min album comprised mostly of key tracks this score would have been higher. 3/5

It’s a 10. It’s probably way higher.

I mean, “Welcome to the Jungle” is just so ubiquitous in all of pop culture that it’s easy to forget it’s the very first song on a debut album. It might be the greatest first track on a debut album ever. It sets such an incredibly high bar that the rest of the album feels like a challenge to top it, and somehow, by the very end, it feels like they’ve managed to go to the moon. We’ve gotten a good chunk of hard rock albums like this where I’ve entered a total zen state, fully in sync with the band, and yet I’m convinced after a first listen that this is the very best of those albums.

“Highway to Hell” was probably the gold standard going into this, and given how much this album shares its DNA with that one in terms of keeping up an insanely paced energy, I’m not surprised at how similar it felt. The difference between this & “Highway to Hell” is that there are 3 incredible all-timer tracks that I already knew about going into this; somehow, hearing them & their placement in the album as a fully structured & paced out project with two distinct sides elevated them all even higher. “Paradise City” as the closing track to the first side of the album works hand-in-hand perfectly with the thematics of “Welcome to the Jungle” & all the tracks in between, showing just how much of a bitch city life can really be. I guess I should’ve paid more attention to realize “Paradise City” is more of a “get me back to God’s country” sort of thing, but they spell it out in spades when you’re actually paying attention to these lines.

The back half of the album is all love songs, to a degree, and they all flow perfectly. I don’t think I can praise “Sweet Child o’ Mine” enough as the climax to the whole album, but the way it contrasts its flowery prose-filled representation of beauty in love works really nicely with how straightforward “Think About You” is right before it. OK, well, I guess “You’re Crazy” is a hate track, but I do kind of love a confrontational track being placed in the middle of all this. The fact that the whole album ends on a track where Axl Rose literally has recorded sex (don’t check what “Axl Rose” is an anagram for) before doing a whole speech about devotion is pretty funny, honestly. He’s totally earnest too.

It’s a brilliantly structured record, given the “G” side & the “R” side being thematically distinct yet all blending together via their soundscapes & energy. Since each track feels like it’s doing its own thing, it all sticks out more memorably as a full set of tracks as opposed to the total ball of energy of “Highway to Hell” as one long blended kick-ass thing. I really can’t praise this album enough, but any more words I type would just be repetitive. Ultimately, it’s one hell of a Christmas present to get this. The whole album is a front to back masterpiece of hard rock, and I can’t imagine we’ll get one in this style that surpasses this, at least for ones that I’ll end up in total sync with. It’s a 10, if not way higher.

It's a lot of fun with some great tunes, although the harder they try to sound cool and dangerous, the funnier they get. Is it just me or does the swearing on this sound weirdly self-conscious?

Younger me loved G&R but I don't vibe with them as much as I used to it. Still fun to revisit this one - an undeniable classic with a shocking number of certified bangers, even more so considering that it's their debut. None of these tracks are filler. Enjoyed Paradise City the most this time around although Welcome to the Jungle always used to be my favourite. It's hard to really judge a lot of these songs since they are so ubiquitous.

slash is great! axl rose is great at times. really tight debut album. if im feeling particularly grumpy i could see this album slipping to a 2-2.5 due to axl being annoying. 3.5

I never understood the hype surrounding Guns N' Roses. The music is rather ordinary. I also can't understand the repeated praise for Slash's supposed virtuosity on the guitar. Maybe it's because I don't play the guitar myself. Anyway, I find this album ordinary too. It played in the background and at least didn't bother me. 3/5

I had to skip some songs half way after I couldn't stand anymore. I can't stand that voice and the squealy guitar.

Guns n' Roses have a sound that is very much tied to the time and place of 80's rock. Sleazy, swaggering, dirty - and yet the production is polished and the band are tight. It is dated, but can be enjoyed like a time capsule that has captured a world where swigging JD, smoking cigarettes and thrusting hips in Spandex is still cool. This is bar brawl music for an 80s American dive bar - but still fun whilst sitting at my desk job at 7am in the South of England. Also, addressing the misogyny; yes, misogyny is bad and should not be condoned, but this is a GnR record: You don't watch a documentary about Jeff Dahmer and complain theres too much murder. Only songs I would have left out here are the last two which offer nothing the other tracks all do twice as well. Regardless, It's probably a light 4 for this one.

His voice becomes a lot after a few songs. Only a fan of the hits and they've been overplayed.

Easy 5, I checked, and I know every single song of this album and don't even need to listen to this thing. Hard rock classic and one of the greatest rock debuts of all time, no doubt. However, G'nR leaves much to be desired besides this.