If the former Guns N’ Roses
legendary guitarist Slash put his bags
together with the strong front man Myles
Kennedy from Alter Bridge and bring a
new band named The Conspirators into the
spotlight it sounds extremely exiting.
Todd Kerns - bass, Brent Fitz on drums
and Frank Sidoris is the second guitar
player. This is apparently the second
album from this line up. The previous
album 'Apocalyptic Love' came in 2012
and flew under my radar.
This new album 'World on Fire'
contains seventeen! songs and they
deliver far over one hour of stiff and
smoky rock n roll. An giant smorgasboard
of songs. This is a musical marathon
journey through heaven and hell and with
angels and devils on your shoulders. The
title track opens the album up and
'World On Fire' is the BIG song on the
album and it feels fresh and very alert.
Big doses of the old GnR sound. Myles is
a tremendous vocalist and drives up the
pace and he seems to enjoy to sing this
song. The slower and dirtier rock anthem
'Shadow Life' is groovy song with nice
chorus and pleasant guitar riffs from
Slash. Full throttle rock n roll is what
'Automatic Overdrive' is about and Myles
shines and glows in this song and is a
perfect car driving track when you are
on the highway.
'Wicked Stone' and '30 Years to
Life' is two of the strongest tracks on
the album with very cool guitars and
solid drumming. The slow ballad 'Bent to
Fly' brakes the tempo off a bit and
feels true and emotional. I skip in the
playlist to the cool song 'Beneath the
Savage Sun' with exciting and heavy
rhythms. Magnificent vocals and strong
guitars in the heaviest track on the
album. The following track 'Withered
Delilah' is also one of the song I'll
save to the future. Slash plays like in
the good old days in this song.
It feels quite lame and boring
in some of the middle songs and maybe
the idea with a 17 tracks album was a
safety action to adapt the disc to a
wider public. 'Battleground' is a seven
minutes sleeping pill. If we jump to
'Dirty Girl' it gets more dusty and
rougher again with catchy guitars and I
have to say that Myles is the savior of
this album. In 'Iris of the Storm' and
'Avalon' Slash shines off with awesome
guitar shredding and they are the best tracks
with the string legend in the front row.
One of my personal favourite songs is
'The Dissident' with cleaner sound and
melodic choruses. This album needed
several turns to stick in my head such
as the track 'Safari Inn' which is an
epic instrumental song. The final track
'The Unholy' is the heavy rock tune and
the journey stops with a little yawn.
I feel fragmented facing the
grading of 'World on Fire'. It have it heights and it lows, but I have to give
it a high OK score, most credit is due to Kenndy's singing and of course Slash
high quality contributions. He has a own
and unique guitar sound, but they could have
left 5-6 tracks behind.
A strong album and one of the
best Slash disc's I've heard since GnR.