I have put off writing this review for several weeks even though I bought Contraband the first day it came out. I bought it expecting to hear "Paradise City" and "Interstate Love Song" clones and that was fine with me because there have been NO great or even good albums put out by bands that formed after Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Stone Temple Pilots changed the face of rock. Even though I love the three previously mentioned bands, they destroyed most of the good bands that existed before them. That left a vaccuum that was filled by talentless acts like Creed and Nickleback. (Bands like Aerosmith and the Red Hot Chili Peppers put out good if not great albums, but were popular before the Revolution.) Anyway I put the CD in my Walkman and listened from start to finish. At first I was almost completely disappointed (I had heard "Slither" before on the radio and it sounded great), the album had a completely different sound than what I expected. Yet over the next week I listened to it five-ten more times I released that I was disappointed not because it was bad, but it had never occured to me that two different elements mixed together could produce a new element. Slash's playing was obvious, yet while in Guns N Roses most of their famous songs were made great by Slash's amazing solos, in Velvet Revolver Slash was just a piece of the puzzle. I found that the most memorable parts of the songs were Weiland's vocals. He sounds different than he did in STP and any critics comparing him to Eddie of Pearl Jam are just bitter. While he does not have the range of Axl, his smooth vocals are a nice change. One thing that is missed is Axl's songwriting, for while he was and is an egotistical maniac who singlehandedly killed THE greatest band in the world at the time, no one can deny that he was an amazing songwriter. While it is unfortunate that Izzy Stradlin is not in the group, Dave Kushner is a decent and effective replacement.