"Rock Is Dead...Long Live Rock". Truer words have never been spoken, as the debut from Velvet Revolver, "Contraband", is the best pure Rock 'N' Roll record in years. Ten years after Nirvana helped save the Rock 'N' Roll world from "Hair Metal", Scott Weiland, Slash, and the boys of VR have saved fans of Rock 'N' Roll from the sorry, no-account likes of Nickelback and Creed. This is what Hard Rock is all about, crunching guitar riffs, pounding bass and drums, and a voice that grabs your attention in a God-like way. From the opening strains of the album's opener, "Sucker Train Blues", it is immediately apparent that this, and not the myth that is Axl Rose's "Chinese Democracy", is the new Guns 'N' Roses. All of the a**-kicking riffs that made the Gunners so great, those created by Guitar God, Slash, are proof that it was the band, and not the voice, that made G 'N' R what it was. And when complimented by one of Rock's great vocalists, you have an album better than anyone could have hoped for. The second track, "Do It For The Kids", could well be the reasoning behind this meeting of musical minds, and the song's base riff is an absolute classic, with Slash's Gibson Les Paul, delivering blistering fills and solos. Next up is "Big Machine", which could well be Scott Weiland's life over the last ten years, summed up by the lyric, "All that first-class jet set brings me down. All that first-class drug s**t brings me down", and the song's musical base is held down by Duff McKagan's rumbling bass. The "Riff-Meister" Slash is at it again on "Headspace", and Mr. Scott's vocals are reminiscent of his best work with Stone Temple Pilots. And on "Slither", the first single, you have a song that sounds unlike anything on Rock Radio today. Even the album's ballads, if you want to call them that, are examples of how this group of musicians have matured and managed to overcome all of their various addictions, though they all battle them to this day. However, it remains to be seen if the group can maintain long enough to have the kind of future that was once hoped for Guns 'N' Roses, as this group has as volatile a front man as the Gunners did. But what sets this band apart from the two previous groups that the primary members played in, is that there is no real musical "style" that is leading Rock 'N' Roll today, as was the case in 1987, when the Gunners were lumped in with the "Hair Metal" crowd, and STP were thought to be a "Grunge" band. What those two bands were, as is the case here, was just pure, hard, Rock 'N' Roll music. No frills, here. Just grab you by the throat and kick you in the groin Rock 'N' Roll, the best of its kind in a long, long time. All hail the saviors that are the members of Velvet Revolver, as they have saved Rock 'N' Roll from becoming the cheesy, ClearChannel controlled piece of garbage that it was on its way to becoming.