Velvet Revolver: Libertad : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Velvet Revolver are an impressive act of defiance: a band of old-school bad boys from twentieth-century megagroups who make a rocket-guitar racket that is more compelling than most current woe-is-me punk and emo. The blitz in "Let It Roll," "Get Out the Door" and "Pills, Demons & Etc." may be second nature to guys who did time in Guns n' Roses and Stone Temple Pilots, but there is plenty of thrill in the fuzz-lined hard-rubber bends of Slash's guitar breaks and the way bassist Duff McKagan keeps time, like a cop swinging a billy club. There is honest depth here too. Since Velvet Revolver's first album, 2004's Contraband, singer Scott Weiland lost his brother to a drug overdose - a tragedy deeply etched into Weiland's fallen-dandy howl in "For a Brother," the deceptively grand ballad "The Last Fight" and, strangely, the cover of ELO's "Can't Get It Out of My Head," which may be Weiland's way of describing the daily battles he still fights with his own dark impulses.