Q.) What makes a rock track special?
A.) Catchy hook, great lyrics, vocals, guitar and beats.

Simple, yet rare!

Rock music is a team game. Each player is only as good as the team put together. And in every team game, there’s a fantasy team, isn’t it! Like putting the best from various teams in a certain spot together and then imagining what madness would occur if they were to play together. Something Real Madrid FC has been trying to do for real in football, but rarely succeeded in doing!

So this album is the fantasy album on paper. Apparently Slash wanted to go solo for sometime. He had a whole bag of rough tunes and riffs he wanted to put to use. So he called the best vocalists/drummers/bassists in the world to put together an album. And when SLASH calls you to sing for him, you just don’t say ‘No!.
Here’s the track list, judge for yourself:

1. “Ghost” featuring Ian Astbury of The Cult & Izzy Stradlin (ex-Guns N’ Roses)
2. “Crucify the Dead” featuring Ozzy Osbourne and Taylor Hawkins of Foo Fighters/Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders
3. “Beautiful Dangerous” featuring Fergie
4. “Back from Cali” featuring Myles Kennedy of Alter Bridge
5. “Promise” featuring Chris Cornell of Soundgarden/ex-Audioslave
6. “By the Sword” featuring Andrew Stockdale of Wolfmother
7. “Gotten” featuring Adam Levine of Maroon 5
8. “Doctor Alibi” featuring Lemmy Kilmeister of Motorhead
9. “Watch This” featuring Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters/Them Crooked Vultures/ex-Nirvana) and Duff McKagan (Velvet Revolver/Duff McKagan’s Loaded/Jane’s Addiction/ex-Guns N’ Roses)
10. “I Hold On” featuring Kid Rock
11. “Nothing to Say” featuring M. Shadows of Avenged Sevenfold
12. “Starlight” featuring Myles Kennedy of Alter Bridge
13. “Saint is a Sinner Too” featuring Rocco DeLuca of Rocco DeLuca and The Burden
14. “We’re All Gonna Die” featuring Iggy Pop
 

Intimidating, huh?!

Considering the potential on paper, this album as a whole fails to live up to the expectations. Yes, the expectations are too high, but then it’s bound to be so with so much power on paper!
The top 5 tracks are Ghost, Doctor Alibi, By the sword, Back from Cali and Starlight.

Myles Kennedy of alter bridge simply outshines all the other vocalists. He grabs this opportunity with both hands and shows a side of his never seen even for Alter Bridge. Starlight and Back from cali are delightful tracks. Starlight specially over-whelms with its melody and range. One of those songs that’ll remain your head for a long long time (especially while you’re writing a test :P). Back from Cali has style written all over it. A brilliant track with beautiful riffs. Lemmy Kilmeister of Motorhead delivers what he promises. A crazy-ass speaker bursting track!
Same goes for ‘Ghost’. The best surprise is ‘By the sword’ though. Andrew Stockdale of wolfmother is one of his kind with his voice. Him and slash pairing up makes your ears beg for that track. And boy does this one deliver! It is understandably the cover track of the album. Very wolfmotherish, the track solders Stockdale’s twang and Slash’s guitar into a something fresh sound.

Then there are the duds in this album. Quite a lot at that! Chris Cornell of audioslave is one of the best vocalist of our times. Your heart aches to dislike his song. What a waste!

Fergie! Why did you even try this? Adam Levine’s gotta stop whining for once. Kid rock wastes an amazing effort by slash. His song, I Hold On, starts with so much promise and ends with you already imagining some other vocalist on the same song. Saint is a sinner too , is a slow peaceful song that will click with some. Dave Grohl ( Foo Fighters/Nirvana) takes on the drums on the instrumental ‘Watch this’. A decent piece that. Ozzy’s ‘Crucify the Dead’ is mediocre at best.

All in all, Slash the album can give Goosebumps onn simply reading the tracklist and the names involved. Only if it lived up to all that. Ah, that would’ve been something. But then, don’t we always say that at the end of a fantasy premier league week too!

Best Songs: Starlight, Back From Cali, By the Sword.