Saints of Los Angeles

iTunes Review

It’s 2008 and do you know where Motley Crue are? About where you might expect them, given their nefarious track record. After years of band infighting, legal hassles, replacement singers, uncomfortable stylistic shifts and the endless exploitation of their bad boy behavior, the original line-up are back on the arena stage and cranking out their old-school, glammed-up heavy metal riffs for all the world to bang their head along with. Not since 1989’s Dr. Feelgood has the band sounded as natural in its environment. Singer Vince Neil has lost a little velocity. His range is huskier and less elastic (as years of well-documented hard living will do), but he commands natural Crue-like rockers such as “Face Down in the Dirt” and “Down at the Whiskey” with ease. Songs are designed to shock and “This Ain’t a Love Song,” “Just Another Psycho,” “Chicks = Trouble” and “Mother f**ker of the Year” deliver on their promises with their nods to decadence wrapped in heavy metal harmonies. Thankfully, the riffs are fresher than the sentiments and Mick Mars’ guitars dive-bomb with the deafening swoops and screeches of old. They’d hate to think of themselves as a nostalgia act, but Saints of Los Angeles does recreate their era in convincing detail.