Velvet Revolver: Contraband

Reviewed by RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * *)

Complete with a seemingly focus-group spawned band name to remind they are three-fifths former Guns N' Roses to one-fifth Stone Temple Pilot, this debut by the hard rock supergroup should be hilarious. It should be a desperate last gasp from the arena rock rehab clinic.

Actually it's not half-bad.

The combination of STP singer Scott Weiland - a man who still seems to have "Bust me, I've got drugs" tattooed prominently about his person - and ex-Gunners Slash, Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum, along with ring-in Dave Kushner, seems to have made an album that is the sum of their parts.

As it glues some hefty tunes to all that riffage and Slash delivers yet another of his on-the-mountain-top solos (at best on Fall to Pieces), it is a fairly predictable set. But it's one of unflagging energy with producer Josh Abraham (the man who turned Shihad into Pacifier) giving it a loud pop sheen which should tempt many a rock radio programmer into taking the week off.

Unsurprisingly, Weiland's lyrics suggest something is forever gnawing away at his fragile psyche, poor dear.

Thankfully that's tempered by the same melodic gifts which made his old band STP occasionally tolerable. That's whether he's doing an Iggy on Do It For the Kids, lifting a bit of Pete Shelley's Homosapien on Big Machine, or doing Bowie-by-numbers on closing ballad Loving the Alien.

The backing suggests industrial-strength GN'R with occasional forays into Soundgarden territory on Headspace.

On the likes of Superhuman you do wonder what it might have sounded like had Axl Rose's feral howl been in there instead.

Worse probably.

It's dated and desperately uncool, but it's still a Class A LA rock album.

Label: RCA