Deluxe edition of  Slash's debut solo release.

The original version of this album, which came out last year, was heralded as a resounding success by all those who knew anything about good rock music. When you have a successful release like that, the follow up has to have something special. Does this have it? Well ...

I knew a lot about Slash's debut solo release, I spoke to him at length about it, and during that conversation he told me that there were songs he had recorded, with other artists, that didn't make it onto the album. Artists such as Alice Cooper and Nicole Scherzinger (Pussycat Dolls, honestly), performing together, Beth Hart and Koshi Inaba. He also told me that these would be included on a later release, along with videos and such like. What we get here is a CD of the original album, with three bonus tracks of acoustic versions of 'Back From Cali,' 'Fall To Pieces' (Velvet Revolver), and 'Sweet Child O' Mine' (GnR), all featuring Myles Kennedy on vocals. Alongside this is a DVD with extra content, starting with a documentary about the making of the album, which is very interesting, and which does include small snippets of some of those tracks that we here in the UK didn't get with our album. And that is all you get of these missing tracks, which is damn annoying because they sound pretty good.

The DVD also includes an interview with the man talking about each of the tracks, live videos of 'Back From Cali,' 'Starlight' and 'Mean Bone,' the music videos of 'By The Sword,' Back From Cali' and 'Beautiful Dangerous,' with a behind the scenes look at how the 'By The Sword' video was made, which is all well and good, and OK, it's probably worth it just to see the video of 'Beautiful Dangerous' with the delectable Fergie in HD on a large screen, but it's not really anything new. I may even have been OK with not getting the missing tracks if the original album had been re-done in 5:1 surround sound, like the Rush Deluxe Edition of 'Moving Pictures,' but no, it's just the same standard stereo mix. So I think Roadrunner has missed a trick here, and not exploited this release as well as they could have done.

Andy B.