A who is who on 45 year old Slash and his music is really not necessary. A quite pleasing personality with a unique profile and a signature play, Slash has been acclaimed for so many things and has been criticized for so little. Based on that fact, this release of his same titled album received a minimum of agreeability by critics. Along with the vast number of guests that heard the call from the American-British guitarist (a.k.a. Saul Hudson), I believe that there will be hard to find a negative opinion of this Slash album.

Therefore, the above mentioned facts by themselves are two powerful promotional tools in hard times for the music industry. Plus the fact that Slash was released as an attachment to Classic Rock magazine, it looks like a no brainer. Let’s get to the point.

“Slash” is a nice, easy to listen to and familiar album, flirting with the pure American Rock/Hard Rock, with some freshness here and there and a Blues/Rock background at its fundamentals. Slash’s guitar “smells” a mile away and, for the ones that have dealt with his GnR period only, we should say that his guitar playing at the strongest parts is balanced by a bluesy/ambient knowledge at it’s lightest. What made an impression, though, is the songs’ actual quality (even if there are a lot of people involved, or maybe because of that). I wouldn’t say that they are that convincing, maybe at points, and as a result the only thing that you are left with in the end is that you just listened to another album with Slash at the guitar. The numerous guests (Ian Astbury, Ozzy, Fergie, Myles Kennedy, Chris Cornell, Lemmy etc.) do not save the day. For the special releases, another song here and there is of no real importance.

Without being bad or annoying, I feel that this was released as a promo tool and not as a music need. Its flare looks to derive from external factors. The fact is that if those songs where released by an average American band, nobody would really bother.