ADLER – Back From The Dead

Shane | 26 February 2013 | Reply

Label: New Ocean Media
Released: November 2012
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar
8.5/10

In the carnage that was the disintegration of the original Gn’R, the greatest train wreck of all belonged to drummer Stephen Adler.

A man who, in his 2010 book My Appetite For Destruction, paints himself as an eager but far too easily led puppy dog of a man, Adler was kicked out of his own notoriously dysfunctional band of delinquents, control freaks and junkies for being too self indulgent!!

He went on to squander money and opportunies, and in his first forty years had “twenty-eight ODs, three botched suicides, two heart attacks, a couple of jail stints, a debilitating stroke . . .”

Finally clean & sober, in Back From The Dead Adler may have – at long last – found a musical outlet worthy of not only his talents, but also his history.

Appetite For Destruction was driven by Adler’s loose, grooving timekeeping, and he brings his A game to BFTD; every song swings like a big brassy pendulum.

Singer Jacob Bunton (Mars Electric, Lynam) hits hard n’ heavy, delivering these lyrics with conviction and compassion – which all sound like they could have come directly from Adler, or at least through conversation and in simpatico compassion with his past.

Back From The Dead isn’t the only song to touch base on Adler’s life with the benefit of hindsight – try Own Worst Enemy, Another Version Of The Truth and Habit on for size.

It’s fair to be wary of Stephen Adler trading on past glories – he sure did it a lot in between all those ODs – but here, whilst there’s no real breaking of new ground, he and his band deliver an album which perhaps gives old school Gunners fans what they have long wanted – referencing Appetite, bringing it up to date, but without changing direction completely, as his former lead singer has under the flag of his old band.

PS – Adler’s old buddy Slash throws in with a solo, as does Rob Zombie’s shredder John 5, but this is a record good enough to stand on it’s own without resorting to “buy it for the guest appearances” bling. All you need to know is that there are no misfires here, just really good songs, great delivery, and all the reason in the world for you to listen to it.

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