VELVET REVOLVER "Contraband"
by Ozzy Stillbourne
Cover: 6 Axl Roses out of 10.
The cover comes in 4 different colors in hopes the diehards (morons) will buy all 4, even though they all have the same songs. It's a chick silhouetted with a gun, kinda like a James Bond thing. By the way, the term velvet revoler is another word for cock. Now you know.

Booklet: 6 Snakepits out of 10.
The center folds out to include a spoon, a lighter, and a small bag of crack. No, just kidding, that stuff comes with the vinyl version! Anyway, all the lyrics are here so you can count how many times Weiland says fuck. There are a few pages of photos with random lyrics written here and there. A page full of thanks and credits. The photos are kinda of boring. I think they should have included everybody's mug shot. Weiland has enough he could have his own book full of them by now. Otherwise, nothing worth really looking at too much.

Songs: 7 Stone Temple Pilots out of 10.
I wasn't quite sure what to expect here with all the hype and everybody doing pullups on these guys dicks like they're the next Guns N' Roses or something, which they're not. Overall, I enjoyed the songs after a few listens, though after a while Weiland's drug references get a little old. It seems like in every song he's talking about drugs, which might not be surprising, but it gets a bit old. Sorry I'm not strung out on heroin so I can't exactly relate to some of what Weiland is singing about. Speaking of drugs, there must have been some serious drug taking going on when the lyrics were written. Half the time I have no idea what the fuck Weiland's singing about. For example, here's some of the lyrics for the first song, "Sucker Train Blues."

"Somebody raped my tapeworm abortion
Come on motherfuckers and deliver the cow
Brain and body melting while there's roaches multiplying
It's the alien infection it's the coming of Christ"

Uh, drugs are bad, mmmkay? Whatever, I guess it's interesting enough. You definitely have no idea what the next line is going to be, though you can almost bet on the fact that whe word "fuck" is used somewhere in almost every song. And as if it's not hard enough to figure out what he's singing about, in a few songs he does the "sing through the bullhorn" thing he did in STP. Great, thanks. The music itself is decent enough. "Fall To Pieces" has a classic Slash sound and if you've heard the first single "Slither" then you'll have an idea of what the rest of the songs sound like. Some sound like STP, and some sound like Scott Weiland doing GNR songs while singing about drugs and saying "fuck" a lot. They're all in the same vein.

Comments: Does it live up to the hype? No. Is it a decent rock record. Sure. It's not reinventing the wheel or anything ground breaking but it's good enough to check out. It sold 250,000 units in it's first week and debuted at #1, which means it's already a success regardless of what I say.