+++ Recommandation - Motley Crue +++

JULY / AUGUST 2008

MÖTLEY CRÜE - SAINTS OF LOS ANGELES

(Seven / Eleven, 2008)

90/100

If any band ever lived with essential rock'n'roll life - that must be Motley Crue. Actually, the biggest surprise is that the all band members are still alive! Alcohol, drugs, prisons and sex definited this metal bend from the day they came up together, more then 25 years ago, when to bassist Nikki Sixx, and drummer Tommy Lee joined singer Vince Neil and guitar player Mick Mars. Now when are they older and smarter, and first time after a decade this group of four recorded album in their original line-up.
"Saints of Los Angeles" in a name of their 9th album which comes from their autobiography "The Dirt" which Motley Crue released 2001. Nikki Sixx himself, main band's author, describes the lbum as "story of used needles, wounded minds, fight with music industry and much sex" , what actually describes band's history.
Sound which brings the album is full of guitar solos, as it is usually with those masters of rock'n'roll, interesting intro parts between I would like to mention song "L.a.m.f." which on its beginning says openly about real face of LA with verses: "This city full of plastic angels will seduce you.." and vocal harmony which always charachetrised Motley Crue. This album is diffrent then those before, because his production is made wise, but in some segments to much caregul, because some songs are really alike, but they are alike those what are played on the radio stations today. But all in all "Saints of Los Angeles" is familiar signature which charachterises Motley Crue and makes them diffrent from all other alt-metal bands who are hitting world scene today.
"Saints of Los Angeles" is an album which will in all segments satisfy old fans and gain many more new ones to the band. While old fans will find a satisfaction in songs like "Down at the Wiskey" in which is fenomenal Micks vocal, and which one is devoted to legendary LA Wiskey a Go Go bar, and those younger will be satisfied with song "Animal in Me" which sounds like it is performed by some new age band.
Title song "Saints of Los Angeles" is a song with two faces. Chours is not to much inovative, althought it is very catchy and deffinitelly will gain more then a eye catching sucess on concerts not only because of its simpliness but also because the lyrics are just fantastic! The main verse of cours : "We are the saints/We signed our life away" says everything about last 25 years behind Motley Crue and live this interesting four. But that is as it seems like the point of whole album - to speak openly and honestly about good and the bad things about life in LA.
"Face Down in the Dirt" is a song which on one certain ways summs a dream from which this band has grown into what they are today: "I wanna make a lot of money / but I don't wanna go to school / I don't wanna get a real job / I don't wanna be you".
"Motherfucker of the year" is non typical song for Motley Crue as we know, probably because their record company would have something to say. Well, it can be provocative as it wish to be, but it will not gain effect which band wanted it to gain.
And what to say in the end? I didn't grow up as a hard Motley fan, but as in all my music phases they were present, i just can't imagine that they will quit doing this. Motley Crue deffinitely turned back time with this album, and they came in the right time to show new generation the hardness before grunge and henna tattoos time, because someone must show to them who did 80's and 90's looked like. Wild!
Well as "Saints of Los Angeles" can never be like "Shout at the Devil", so as 2008. can never be like 1983., with no doubts relecties the point of sleazea from which came most of bands of new generations.
Wellcome to Los Angeles!

Review: Ivana Sataić - Ivy

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MÖTLEY CRÜE

Biography: Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock'n'Roll

The poster boys for Eighties hair metal, Mötley Crüe parlayed whip-lash hard-rock songs, melodic power ballads and a hedonistic image into platinum-level heavy-metal superstardom, topping the charts with Dr. Feelgood (Number One, 1989) and coming close with Theatre of Pain (Number Six, 1985), Girls, Girls Girls (Number Two, 1987) and a greatest-hits collection, Decade of Decadence - '81-'91 (Number 2, 1991).
Nikki Sixx was a member of a successful L.A. metal band called London when he decided to form his own band. Tommy Lee came aboard as drummer, and they decided to call themselves Christmas. Guitarist Mick Mars was discovered through a classified ad reading, "Loud Rude Aggressive Guitarist Available." Vocalist Vince Neil was plucked from a Cheap Trick cover band. Mars came up with the new, strangely umlauted name. Their eponymous, independently released debut was picked up by Elektra Records and retitled Too Fast for Love (Number 77, 1983).
Shout at the Devil (Number 17, 1983), with its canny hints of Satanism, followed, but the band did not catch on in a big way until Theatre of Pain. Fueled by a cover of Brownsville Station's 1974 hit "Smokin' in the Boy's Room" (Number 16, 1985) and the power ballad "Home Sweet Home" (Number 89, 1985), the album sold more than two million copies.
For all the album sales, Crüe also was known as an extravagant live band, a scrappier Van Halen doing a rock version of a Vegas review, with elaborate sets and lighting, revolving drum platforms, pyrotechnics and dancing girls. Still, subsequent albums Girls, Girls, Girls and Dr. Feelgood continued the band's streak of platinum discs, selling two million and four million copies, respectively. In addition to its selection of greatest hits, Decade of Decadence included new material, such as a hard-rock cover version of the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the U.K."
Off stage, Mötley Crüe lived the rock & roll lifestyle to its fullest, with celebrity marriages - Tommy Lee to actress Heather Locklear, from 1986 to 1994, then to Baywatch bombshell Pamela Anderson from 1995 to 1998; Nikki Sixx to former Prince protégée Vanity in 1987 - substance abuse and scrapes with the law. Sixx spent more than a year addicted to heroin. In 1986 Neil was convicted of vehicular manslaughter after a drunken car accident two years earlier resulted in the death of Hanoi Rocks drummer Nicholas "Razzle" Dingley. Neil served twenty days in jail, performed 200 hours of community service and was assessed $2.6 million in damages.
After the band replaced Neil with singer John Corabi in 1992, Neil filed a $5 million wrongful termination suit and released a couple of solo albums, Exposed (Number 13, 1993) and the weak-selling Carved in Stone (1995). Mötley Crüe (Number Seven, 1994), the band's first album without Neil, produced two songs that charted on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks, "Hooligan's Holiday" (Number Ten, 1994) and Misunderstood (Number 24, 1994). The band fired Corabi two years later to bring Neil back on for a reunion of the original lineup. The resulting album, Generation Swine (Number Four, 1997) attempted to cash in on the alternative-rock craze, with songs exploring grunge and industrial metal, but despite the band's carbon-copy re-recording of an old hit, re-titled "Shout at the Devil '97," the album quickly fell off the chart.
Greatest Hits (Number 20, 1998) and Live Entertainment or Death (Number 33, 1999) continued the Crüe's commercial skid. Shortly after completing the subsequent tour, drummer Lee spent four months in jail for assaulting his then-wife, Anderson. Upon being released, Lee left the band and formed the rap-metal band Methods of Mayhem, in which he played guitar and sang. Mötley Crüe replaced Lee with former Ozzy Osbourne drummer Randy Castillo and returned to its original hard rock formula for its final album, New Tattoo (Number 41, 2000). Castillo died of cancer two years later. The band went on a recording hiatus for five years but its members, appearing on reality shows and in gossip columns, never left the public eye. In 2005, the Cr ü e hit the road for a reunion tour that coincided with another greatest-hits compilation, Red, White & Crüe (Number Six, 2005), that included three new tracks, "If I Die Tomorrow" - penned by pop-punkers Simple Plan - (Number Four, Mainstream Rock, 2005), "Sick Love Song" and a cover of The Rolling Stones' "Street Fighting Man."
Mötley Crüe has continued touring, and Nikki Six announced in his online diary in 2008 that the band had completed ten songs for an upcoming concept album, The Dirt, a musical version of the 2001 Crüe biography, The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band.
Mötley Crüe released "Saints of Los Angeles" in 2008 and the band is currently touring.