Get In The Ring motherf***er (Use Your Illusion II - Guns n' Roses)

Member Name: Satan's_Spawn

Product:	Use Your Illusion II - Guns n' Roses
Date:	07/10/00 (56 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's G'NR!

Disadvantages: none, it's GN'R!

There is a temptation when reviewing any Guns N’ Roses material, to constantly use Appetite For Destruction as a measuring stick. Perhaps this is the constant pitfall of having such a highly successful first album. I believe each album, and even each track should be judged on its own particular merit.
One of the things that is so great about GN’R, is that their music does not fit easily into any particular category. Having a style all of your own, plays a great part in any bands success, (try categorising Queen, U2, and even Madness.) and GN’R are certainly capable of playing a huge range of excellent music from beautiful ballads to in your face rants.
Use Your Illusion 2 kicks off with ‘Civil War’. A beautifully put together track with a very clear message, that can perhaps be summed up with the lyrics, “D’you wear a black armband when they shot the man who said, ‘peace could last forever’ and in my first memories they shot Kennedy, and I went numb when I learned to see.”
14 Years comes next, with Izzy Stradlin’ handling the vocals, and you can’t help wondering if his ‘14 years that are gone forever’ are 14 of the years spent in Axl’s somewhat volatile company!!
Yesterdays has Axl reminiscing on days gone by and is a great sing a long number, after all, we all love a little nostalgia.
Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door needs no explanation, though I personally prefer this track live, with 70000 or so people all joining in. (It lacks a little something when I sit and sing along on my own!)
Get In the Ring comes next, and became the name of the massive GN’R world tour that followed the release of the Use Your Illusions despite the fact that, to the best of my knowledge, they never actually played the track on tour. Get In the Ring is the bands way of getting back at “all the punks in the press who tried to start shit by printing li
es instead of the things we said” The music press were not amused, I personally think it was something that’s needed to be said for many years!
Shotgun Blues follows Get In The Ring, another Axl rant, this time rumoured to be aimed at Motley Crue fromtman Vince Neil who Axl had a long running battle with.
Breakdown is one of my personal favourites, a mellow but not ballady type song with some very thought provoking lyrics, musing on the irony of life, where the ones you most love, are usually the ones who hurt you most.
Pretty Tied Up is a nice rocking moment covering the many aspects of life that GN’R find so weird.
Locomotive is maybe one of the best tracks on the album, and certainly has some of the best lyrics, though I don’t find it musically as good as some other tracks.
So Fine, written and sung by Duff McKagan, proving that Axl, Slash and Izzy are not the only creative talent in GN’R, but also proving to me that Duff should stick to singing punk tunes.
Estranged is another Axl brainchild, proving once again to anyone who ever doubted it, that this man, as unpredictable as he may often be, has more talent than he has ever really been credited with, (except perhaps for among the other members of GN’R who often refer to him as a ‘genius’, and I think they have a very good point!)
You Could Be Mine, from the film Terminator 2, is hard rock pure and simple! Excellent.
Don’t Cry comes next with its alternative lyrics. The original Don’t Cry was actually penned before Appetite, but the band felt it wasn’t quite right for a first album, by the time the Use Your Illusion’s came into being, Axl no longer felt the lyrics were relevant, and so he re-wrote them. He did a brilliant job and they fit perfectly.
My World ends the album with another little piece of Axl ranting, beginning, “You wanna step into my world, it’s a sociopsychotic state of bliss
” leaving you to ponder on the greatness of GN’R and the strangeness of the genius that is W. Axl Rose.

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