LA Guns are vocalist Phil Lewis and guitarist Tracii Guns. Full stop. Both parties have trialled separate line-ups without the other, but output has never matched what these guys can do together.
I used to adore LA Guns. Vicious Circle, Cocked & Loaded, Waking The Dead, Hollywood Vampires…all genre classics!
But recent years have seen the band deliver some pretty suspect releases and you really don’t know quite what a new album might deliver these days.
With Missing Piece there are still some missing pieces. Phil sounds a fresh and vibrant as always, Tracii is shredding like a mofo, but the sound here leans towards a loose and trashy punk vibe, with a pretty ordinary production effort.
The album moves fast, the riffs come just as quickly and there’s attitude overload, but essentially, we’re talking about half an album of decent songs and half forgettable ones, plus a questionable production quality.
What I’m liking is the rapid fire All the Same to Me, Speed; the groovy Kill It Or Die (shit chorus though) and the ballads Crystal Eyes Christine and the more epic The Flood's the Fault of the Rain.
Cool attitude, great energy, but poor production and too many fillers where it doesn’t sound like too much time has been spent on the writing process. I’m still up in the air over buying a hard copy for my LA Guns collection. It’s already missing a few albums due to similar QC problems, so my OCD won’t kick in too badly.
