Tomorrow marks the twentieth anniversary of the release of Guns N’ Roses’ double-disc opus, Use Your Illuision. It seems like public perception has soured on these albums over the years — even Axl Rose and Slash have accused them of being bloated and over-produced — but I still love ‘em to death. For one thing, seeing as they ended up being the last proper studio albums of original material from the actual Guns N’ Roses (not Axl Rose’s solo group or whatever),  I’m glad that the band basically included every song they had written up ’til that point here. And for another thing, I love the diversity of the records — that they didn’t just end up being Appetite for More Destruction. Maybe the Illusion albums ended up being a failed experiment, but I still, to this day, find them to be a pretty exciting experiment*.

So. Since we didn’t do a “Question of the Week” this week, and I wanted to do something to commemorate this anniversary, I thought we’d play a fun game that Vince and I (and a lot of our other friends) used to play in the past: whittling these two mammoth albums down to one collection. Geffen Records actually did that themselves in 1998, releasing a twelve-song single volume version of UYI that, if you ask me, had a pretty strange selection of songs on it… but it’s an entertaining time waster to see if you can do better.

There are no rules to the game, other than a) all the songs on your track list have to come from the Illusions albums (duh), and b) it all has to fit on one CD (roughly 80 minutes), despite the fact that CDs are now obsolete. I’ve included my own personal version after the jump… I’ll be more than a little excited to see all of yours as well.

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It’s barely been more than a month since DevilDriver released their fifth studio album, Beast, but bassist Jon Miller has now announced his departure from the band.

His statement doesn’t really tell us anything and makes the split sound perfectly amiable (it’s so vanilla I’m not even gonna print it here, but you can read it at Metal Underground if you’re really curious), but Miller had entered rehab in January of this year, so it’s hard not to speculate that his new-found sobriety had something to do with his decision to leave the group. In case it isn’t obvious, being in a band out on tour isn’t necessarily the environment most conducive to just saying “no” — you will constantly be surrounded by people who are partying, and sitting on the bus by yourself is not a lot of fun.

The band hasn’t announced an official replacement, but apparently some dude named Bubbles, who used to be Bury Your Dead and is now DevilDriver’s tour manager, has been filling in for Miller these past few months, so that should pretty much take care of that.

Yep, DevilDriver now has members named “Dez” and “Bubbles.” Not since the “Izzy/Dizzy” era of Guns N’ Roses has anything been so silly.

-AR

Here’s the latest round of idiotic news revolving around the band you can pretty much blame for this website’s existence.

First of all, Corey Taylor has been heavily rumored to be the new vocalist for Velvet Revolver, and then a couple of weeks ago, he refused to contradict that rumor, thereby pretty much confirming it. Now Metal Insider tells me that Duff McKagan thinks he’s being cute by pretty much doing the same thing, telling fans during a recent online chat that “I can neither confirm nor deny” that Taylor is the group’s new singer before apparently mistaking Taylor for a can of Pepsi: “He’s the voice of a whole new generation.”

Slipknot’s been around for over a decade now, so I guess McKagan doesn’t actually know what the phrase “new generation” means, but whatever. Like I said last month, there’s absolutely no reason to say shit like this in the press unless Taylor got the job. And at this point, VR absolutely needs to start denying the rumor, or just announce Taylor as the new singer. Because now if he’s not the new singer, whomever the new singer is is gonna hafta be pretty frickin’ awesome and/or famous, or the whole thing is just gonna seem anticlimactic. In fact, if Taylor isn’t the new singer, I’d say they either need to get Robert Plant, or just announce a reunion of the original Guns N’ Roses.

Which, incidentally, some morons think is what’s gonna happen. From Classic Rock:

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Hard to believe, but Chinese Democracy officially came out two years ago today. (You can read my original review here. I still stand by every word, and I still prefer CD to Death Magnetic.) Promotion for the album has still been anemic. Yes, the band (such as it were) has finally toured certain territories, but it doesn’t amount to much when you consider how much time has passed. And there have still been no music videos, I still haven’t gotten my motherfucking Dr. Pepper, and Axl Rose has only communicated with the press sparsely and electronically.

But that doesn’t really matter, because I don’t even think that my namesake would have the most interesting story to tell regarding the creation of Chinese Democracy.

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video courtesy MissPinksMusic

So Duff McKagan joined Axl Rose and his new Guns N’ Roses on-stage at the 02 Arena in London last night, playing bass for “You Could Be Mine” (video above) and rhythm guitars for “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” and “Nice Boys.”  (You can also see photos here.) Inevitably, this is going to make people ask the question: “Is the original line-up (or something closely resembling the original line-up) of Guns N’ Roses getting back together?” As MetalSucks’ resident GN’R geek, I hereby take it upon myself to provide reckless analysis regarding this blessed event. After the jump, get both sides of the argument, as provided by my drug-addled fanboy brain.

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

For no particular reason whatsoever other than we thought it would be fun, this week we asked our writers:

IF YOU COULD HAVE BEEN PRESENT FOR THE CREATION OF ANY SINGLE METAL ALBUM, WHICH ONE WOULD IT BE AND WHY?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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Kevin Dubrow is dead, and I think that most of us assumed he would take Quiet Riot (the seventh most-often-miscategorized-as-a-hair-metal-band of all time) with him to the grave. Those of us who did make that assumption, however, forgot that desperate times call for desperate measures, and an empty belly holds no room for dignity.

So Quiet Riot are re-forming.

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I love reading groupie biographies. It’s sort of a hobby of mine. I’ve read everyone’s, from Pamela Des Barres to Catherine James to Marianne Faithfull (she counts), and am eagerly awaiting the memoirs of Cherry Vanilla, the woman who heroically blew half of New York to get David Bowie on the radio. Some women go sexually apeshit on rock stars, others enjoy reading about it while maintaining a happily gonorrhea-free existence. It’s just how it goes.

When I first heard of The Last Living Slut: Born in Iran, Bred Backstage, I was rather intrigued. Mind you, I had some preconceptions because of the key words: “slut” and “Iran.” It’s one thing to fuck everyone from Autograph to Winger and write about it, but controversy for the sake of controversy is quite another beast (with two backs, har har).

Though I tried to brush off the combination of these topics as calculated edginess, I couldn’t help but soften to Ms. Roxana Shirazi. Her story runs the gamut from depressingly sad (getting bullied in middle school for being a foreigner) to hilarious (watching as Matt Sorum interrupts himself during a threesome to do push-ups because he’s in ‘such good shape”) to horrifying (falling in love with Dizzy Reed and having to abort his baby). Everything aside, she’s just a girl who loves her rock’n’roll. Naked or otherwise.

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I’ve been getting a lot reader e-mails this week about the various goings-on with GN’R's current South American tour, but I just can’t seem to bring myself to write about them. It’s all the usual bullshit that seems to follow Axl Rose wherever he goes: he doesn’t show up for a gig, and chaos ensues; he does show up, but stops the show and threatens to leave because some attention-starved fan throws a bottle at him; he cancels a show because his precious stage collapses during a storm. Okay, so that last one is actually pretty unusual and obviously not at all Rose’s fault, but the fact remains that this dude is some kind of drama magnet, and for whatever reason, I’m just not feeling it this week. (Good to know that “Rage” is getting plenty of good photos out of the whole thing, though.)

What does interest me about this tour is the series of video diaries that two of its members, bassist Tommy Stinson and guitarist Dj Ashba, have released.

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As one of the only people in the English-speaking world who will admit to enjoying Chinese Democracy, I was excited for nu-GN’R to get out on the road and finally start playing all the new shit.

But between the Dj Ashba incident and now this… Jesus Christ.

You thought that MTV performance sucked?

Skip to 1:58.

Go ahead. Just do it.

Two words:

Fucking. Disgraceful.

Three more words:

WHY THE DANCING LADY?!?

More of Axl Rose making Vince Neil look good after the jump.

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So not only is Rose and whatever four to sixty-two musicians he’s calling “Guns N’ Roses” these days really returning to wreak more havoc upon Canada, but it looks like one of the tour stops will be Montreal.

Anyone remember what happened the last time GN’R played Montreal?

The above news report is completely correct, of course. The rioting was caused by the injuries sustained by James Hatfield (NOT Hetfield), and not because after Hatfield sustained said injuries, Axl Rose failed to play a complete show. Sure sure.

Anyway, dates after the jump. Here Today… Gone to Hell, which is about as close to an official fan site as GN’R has these days, says the band currently consists of guitarists Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal, Dj Ashba, and Richard Fortus, bassist Tommy Stinson, drummer Frank Ferrer, and keyboardists Dizzy Reed and Chris Pitman. Hey, some of those dudes have actually played on a Guns N’ Rose record!

Click to read more…

Given the usually GN’R-centric nature of this site I usually try to shy away from GN’R-related non-news, but this one is too good to pass up, and with Axl Rosenberg’s day off today I just couldn’t resist. Dizzy Reed, Guns N’ Roses’ keyboardist since 1990, has posted the following message on his MySpace page:

“That’s right, I am still looking for a place to lay my head when I am in L.A. And let me narrow it down so I don’t get the multitude of useless responses I got last time: I want to rent a room FROM someone, not TO someone. It must be in L.A. (so don’t bother resondoing from anywhere else saying you wish or whatever) preferably the Ho, WeHo, NoHo area. And I prefer a female roomate who doesn’t have any crazy-ass drug habits (especially weed, speed) but drinkin Jager and watchin sports is way coolio. No weird ENERGY man!! Contact me if u r for real….. Diz.”

I guess Axl Rose’s retainer ain’t payin’ the bills for Dizzy. I would love to meet the coolio, real, awesome ENERGY chick who ends up shacking up with Diz.

-VN