...wait, what?
...
Oh. It's not the Slash album entitled Living The Dream. It's the Uriah Heep album entitled Living The Dream released exactly one week before the Slash album Living The Dream.
Uriah Heep might not be the most popular band releasing an album this month but they certainly know how to write decent music. Their latest album, Living The Dream, contains a variety of Hard Prog songs that tend to sway more towards the Prog side.
The songs are...
I mean...
Fuck it, I can't do this.
Change of plan guys, we're flipping the script!
Living The Dream - Slash featuring Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators
Today, we'll be looking at the new album from guitarist Slash, vocalist Myles Kennedy and the backing band The Conspirators. I was going to review the new album from Uriah Heep, also entitled Living The Dream, but I'm not sure I can make an entertaining review out of an album I was largely indifferent to. If you want to know my in-depth thoughts about that album, don't worry. I'll probably write about it in an upcoming Rapid Fire post.
If there's one thing that Slash has proven by now, it's that he's an incredibly competent guitar player and knows how to write a tasty riff. If there are two things he's proven, it's that he has some fuck-ugly album artwork ideas that nobody warns him about before it's too late. I mean, fucking look at it. It's like something you'd find in the candy section of a supermarket or inside a drug dealer's jacket pocket. The strange thing is, the album is apparently meant to be a sarcastic assessment of life in 2018 at the moment. We're all "living the dream" as far as world politics goes, which would've made for a pretty cool album cover if the artist hadn't snorted a load of Refreshers before coming up with this design.
Fortunately, the material contained within doesn't represent the cover and the music is still very much Slash's unique brand of guitar-driven Hard Rock with a few tweaks here and there. Album opener "The Call Of The Wild" starts off with a Southern twist but the guitarwork and exciting build up throughout sounds right at home on a Slash record, presumably to show off that Slash is still killing it on guitar but also that he's willing to try new styles out without going full Muse and abandoning the thing he's good at in favour of self-serving wank. If you read my review of the last Slash album, you'll see that I claimed Slash was beginning to try new forms of Hard Rock that weren't as guitar driven, something that remains in this album only with a few extra genres thrown into the mix for good measure too.
It's admirable that Slash found a way to innovate without straying too far from what he's good at and what people want when they pick up a Slash record. I said it before and I'll say it again; when you listen to a Slash album, you want Rock music with great guitar. Nothing more, nothing less. The worst things he can do are stray from that formula with dull piano ballads or pump out generic riffs that we've heard a million times before. Whilst he doesn't tickle the ivories just yet (I'm dreading the day that he does), there are a couple of songs sporting riffs that sound a little uninspired.
You can usually tell the songs that crew members felt were generic due to the addition of unique guitar tones to mask the fact that the riff isn't anything special ("My Antidote", "Read Between The Lines") but at least the solos are always great and you can't fault the band for at least trying to spice things up a bit with some guitar effects. In fact, out of the last three Slash albums, this one's probably the most varied as far as musical sound goes due to the addition of several Rock subgenre techniques and what the band toyed with in World On Fire.
Songs like "The One You Loved Is Gone" is more of an emotional power ballad, starting off similar to what I imagine an acoustic set by the band Poison would contain. Slash shows restraint, even during the guitar solo, and allows the band a chance to shine for a brief moment. Then there's slow Bluesy number "The Great Pretender", a song Slash probably wrote after listening to someone's monophonic ringtone of "Still Got The Blues" - Gary Moore going off. Thankfully, these slower songs don't appear that often and they're not the only examples of Slash trying out different genres.
"Driving Rain" was a great choice for the album's lead single, confidently boasting a funky rhythm, heavy guitar riff and powerful chorus that could easily belong on Apocalyptic Love or World On Fire. This is the kind of innovation that Slash should aim for, not the slower material (unless he can pull off some fine guitar work in the process). However, this album isn't all innovation; there's plenty for fans of previous material, specifically songs like "Slow Grind" that opens with some sweet bass before breaking into pure Hard Rock, "Sugar Cane" containing an action packed fast paced riff and footstomping rhythm and "Boulevard Of Broken Hearts", album closer with a touch of "Eye Of The Tiger" in the intro before bringing it home with a chorus perfect for being blasted out at a stadium gig.
Overall, Living The Dream starts to suffer in the middle but successfully turns things around in the third act. Guitar lovers have plenty to dig into and those wanting something more from Slash are given a taste at what he's capable of. Whilst I believe that Slash doesn't necessarily need to record his attempt at a Funk or Southern Rock album just yet, I'd like to hear him tackle some more musical styles blended with his signature style of Hard Rock. I would also recommend maybe cutting down the tracklist, as I feel like Slash and the band were stretched pretty thin coming up with 12 different songs when 10 would've been plenty.
If I had to pick out the weakest aspect of the album, I think I'd have to say Myles Kennedy. I've been a big champion of Myles ever since he proved he could do Axl's job better than he ever could but there were quite a few tracks here that felt like he was phoning it in a little. I'm not saying Myles has gone the way of Ian Gillan, just that he didn't bring anywhere near the same level of passion and fire that he channelled in Apocalyptic Love or World On Fire throughout the entire album. The backing band did their jobs admirably though and I know it's easy to gloss over their effort when you've got Slash and Myles at the top of the billing.
I rate the album 7/10 as it's got a lot of great stuff going for it but weaker vocals and some uninspired riffs take the score down a little, even if mixing genres and keeping stronger aspects of older songs boosts what would've been a mediocre score. I recommend the album to fans of Slash's previous work although I'd probably recommend those albums to fans of Hard Rock and maybe just a handful of songs off Living The Dream to those wanting new tunes to check out. I just hope Slash's next album has tighter Riff-Based-Rock, some more treks into different musical territories and album artwork that doesn't make me ashamed to fucking look at it.
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