It’s about fuckin’ time
Saints of Los Angeles, Mötley Records
Release date: 24 June 2008
By Joe DeRosa
If you’ve ever been in a fight, then you’re going to know exactly how this feels: You’re bruised, you’re bloodied, your body is aching and throbbing, and you’re just out of wits. But the adrenaline rush is so intense, it’s amazing. You just got your ass kicked, yet you feel like you’ve conquered the world. This is exactly how a Mötley Crüe record is supposed to feel. After nearly a decade of solo albums, side projects, deceit, speculation and even a couple visits to the New York Times best seller list, Nikki, Tommy, Mick and Vince have reunited for Saints of Los Angeles, the first studio album recorded by the original lineup in almost 10 years. You may ask, “Why now?” Although the band may tell you it’s for the fans, one of the truest and most honest moments in Crüe history came recently on Larry King Live when guitarist Mick Mars answered that very question with one word: “Greed.” Although Mick was clearly being facetious, I can’t help but to believe it was a moment of brutal honesty masked by sarcasm. That being said, when I found out the boys were recording a new album, I didn’t put much stock in it being very good. Not only did my absolute favorite band of the cassette era prove me wrong, they threw dirt in my face to prove it–Neil Strauss’s The Dirt, to be exact.
SOLA is a biographical album of sorts in that most of it comes from The Dirt, the 2001 Mötley Crüe biography written by the aforementioned Strauss. Nikki Sixx takes on the task yet again as the Crüe’s chief songwriter for SOLA, enlisting the help of co-producers and Sixx A.M. band mates James Michael and DJ Ashba. Along with Marti Frederikson and Mick Mars. And what they put together is quite possibly the loudest, raunchiest and hardest-hitting Mötley Crüe record to date. With SOLA, their ninth studio album, the Crüe has finally been able to capture, in music, the same rawness of their bad-boy rocker lifestyles that they have long been so infamous for. SOLA begins with “L.A.M.F.” (you figure it out), a spoken word intro to the ugly underbelly of the L.A. music scene. That leads right into “Face Down in the Dirt,” a track where Vince Neil declares, “It’s a dirty job/ but someone’s gotta do it.” And for the rest of the album, the Crüe do it as only they can.
“Down at the Whiskey” is the most reminiscent of the old Crüe, as they relive the good times they shared at the famous, Sunset Strip go-go bar. “Saints of Los Angeles” is the Mötley Crüe anthem for the new millennium in which the boys remind us that they are here to live their lives loud, fast and out of control just as they please, and we are all here to love them for it. Other highlights of SOLA include . . . Oh, hell, it’s Mötley Crüe. You know you’re gonna love all of it! From the hard-hitting “Welcome to the Machine” and “Just Another Psycho” all the way to the typically Crüe, over-the-top fashion of “Chicks = Trouble.” You’ll even be okay with the Crüe’s sudden fondness for the word “fuck,” which they use every chance they get on SOLA.
As with any relationship, there are times in which you just can’t seem to get along. When you’re dealing with four guys with such drug- and alcohol-fueled lifestyles, the story was bound to unfold as it did. The chaos. The breakup. And now the inevitable return. The Crüe has come back angrier, louder and more volatile than ever, and we are better for it. To borrow from SOLA’s closing track, the appropriately titled, “Goin’ Out Swingin’,” these guys are “Just a gang of four/ Got each other’s back/ Out for blood like wild dogs in a pack. . . . You can’t stop us cuz we’re goin’ out swingin’.” And with that, the Crüe has again left us bloodied and bruised, and damn if it don’t feel good.