Album Review: LA Guns - Checkered Past

Why do I do these things to myself? That's the question you might be asking, given what I said about the last few LA Guns albums. The odds are very good I already knew what my opinion of this record would be long before pressing play, but I still went down that road. So why do I do it? Part of it is the morbid curiosity to see if they have the self awareness to improve, part of it is to compare where they are with the two 'new' Guns N Roses songs that have come out this year, and part of it is needing content to talk about. That last part is me being honest. There aren't always enough records being released I'm truly interested in talking about, so this is the cost of doing business, you might say.

I have spoken harshly about the last couple of LA Guns records, because I feel they deserve it. This recent run the band has been on has consisted of records that don't have memorable songs, and also sound like complete hell. Despite their decades of experience, they are releasing music that sounds like demos for what would still be a mediocre record. The record Traci Guns released with Michael Sweet at least sounded good, even if it wasn't any better written.

Back with his main band, Guns has reverted to the poor guitar sounds that have plagued these records. The band never sounds heavy, or dangerous, or even rocking, with his fuzzy tone that gets washed out by the hazy production. I'm not sure how they wind up sounding like this, but the album sounds like a vinyl with decades of dust built up in the grooves. The sound is weak and dingy, and just plain poor given how easy it is to get great sounds these days. Not much has changed, it seems.

What's weirdest to me is that this album isn't even a hard rock record. The band seems intent on trying to make a trippier Cheap Trick album, which isn't a sentence I ever thought I would be writing. It is interesting to see them trying out these odd tangents, despite how few of them truly work out. The fact of the matter is that they haven't been writing good songs for quite a while, and this album doesn't have many to change my opinion. I like simple music, but it requires the pieces to be sharper if it's going to work. The riffs and melodic ideas on this record aren't so well honed.

I can't say this is a better record than the previous few, but it is at least a more interesting record. Even when it isn't good, it isn't as boring as the band has been in the past. That was a word I could use to describe Guns N Roses' effort on "Hard Skool", which is a better song than anything here, but a complete snore. LA Guns at least makes me rubberneck a bit and ask myself why they're doing the things they're doing, and why they're still getting money to make records. That's not nothing, so I guess we can call that an incredibly minor victory.