Guns N’ Roses are working on a new album. Or at least they are “trying” to. That’s according to no less an authority than Slash himself.
This revelation came up when the top-hatted one discussed his new Orgy Of The Damned record with the Daily Star. He explained that Myles Kennedy, who has played with Slash in his Conspirators project wasn’t guesting on the record: “It was my own side thing, so I wasn’t dragging my own guys in.”
“Guns N' Roses are trying to make their own record and I'm working with them in that capacity but this didn't involve anyone else."
It’s been eight whole years since Slash reunited with Axl Rose and Duff McKagan from the classic line up for the Not In This Lifetime… Tour in 2016. Since then the band have toured extensively and both Rose and Slash have teased the possibility of brand new material on numerous occasions, though in October 2021 the latter admitted: “As far as new Guns is concerned; we haven’t even gotten to that point of really in earnest sitting down and writing.”
His latest comments suggest that there has been some movement, at least.
Of course, the band have released a number of one off singles over the past three years, but Absurd and Hard Skool from 2021 and Perhaps and The General were all offcuts from the Chinese Democracy sessions in the late 1990s.
In the meantime, Slash’s Orgy Of The Damned album was released last week. It’s a blues covers project, though one that’s flexible enough to find a place for Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone and Stevie Wonder’s Living For The City.
There are a glittering array of vocal collaborators too, including Brian Johnson, Iggy Pop, Steven Tyler, Beth Hart, Paul Rodgers, Billy Gibbons and Chris Robinson. But as he pointed out, no Myles Kennedy, and no Axl.
The 30th anniversary of the last Guns N’ Roses album to feature both its iconic guitarist and frontman passed last year. The Spaghetti Incident? was released in November 1993 and it would take Axl Rose fifteen years, thirteen separate studios, four credited guitarists and an estimated $13 million to complete its follow up, Chinese Democracy, the most expensive album in the history of recording.
In that context the news that the reunited GNR are currently ‘trying’ to make a new album should be taken with a hefty pinch of salt...
Orgy Of The Damned is out now on Gibson Records.
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