Track Listing
01. L.A.M.F.
02. Face Down in the Dirt
03. What’s It Gonna Take
04. Down at the Whisky
05. Saints of Lost Angeles
06. Mutherfucker of the Year
07.The Animal in Me
08. Welcome to the Machine
09. Just Another Psycho
10. Chicks = Trouble
11. This Ain’t a Love Song
12. White Trash Circus
13. Goin’ Out Swingin’

With the resurgence of 1980’s hair metal popularity, bands that had at one time lost relevance and poise are making national news with comeback albums and reunion tours. A few of the smartest have capitalized on the popularity of a single band member. Poison’s Bret Michaels is on Rock of Love No. 3, Axl Rose’s continuing promise for a new GNR album still keeps fans drooling, and Motley Crue took a good look at Nikki Sixx and his popularity following the success of The Heroin Diaries (in both book and soundtrack). In doing so, they have brought us quite possibly the best album ever produced by the ground breaking, once cross-dressing, glamour queens.

Slithering towards the dream, all infected with the same disease, awaiting your flesh to be cloaked in silver. As the fat rats grovel, ready to steal your innocence and exploit your soul. Some will hit their knees in a rancid act of desperation while others search for a hopeless god to save them. For every four, there will be 100,000 fallen, drowning in a cesspool of awareness that they have failed. This city full of plastic angels will seduce you … welcome to Los Angeles. And so begins one of the most interesting journeys ever taken on a concept album.

Saints of Los Angeles is an interesting and solid album. Creating a theme of the degradation of the Los Angeles culture, it comes across as an angry “Hotel California” and is easily the best effort by the Crue in … ever, really. 1985’s Theater of Pain comes in a close second. Motley Crue have found a definite writing style that is clearly Crue, yet have adapted, better than many other holdouts from the 1980’s, to the sounds of modern metal. Sixx has found a new footing in his song writing and his side project (Sixx AM) is influencing him positively in his work with Crue.

Overall, the album is engaging and inspires this head-banger to indeed bang. It is Nikki Sixx at his best and lead singer Vince Neil is better now than twenty years ago. And I have to really give kudos to guitarist Mick Mars who, despite his struggles with Ankylosing Spondylitis, an arthritic condition that limits movement and causes severe pain, rocks it out with the best of them. “Down at the Whisky” feels like an homage to Girls, Girls, Girls and the first single, “Saints of Los Angeles” is catchy, angry, and quite possibly the best song on the album. Don’t be fooled by the title of track eight – it is not Pink Floyd’s “Welcome to the Machine.” At times, the album does feel long. A couple of tracks could have been cut and the concept still would have come across.

Right now, Crue is hosting the uninspiringly named Crue Fest summer festival. It features a mix of different hard rock and nu-metal bands such as Trapt and Papa Roach to appeal to the young metal heads. This reviewer feels, however, they would have been best served touring just with Sixx AM (who is also on the tour.) The album holds up just fine without huge festival-tour hype, and a tour that large possibly takes away from the power of the music.

Go out and buy the album, download it, or however else you get your music. It’s worth every penny you might (or might not) pay.

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