Slash

It's pretty hard to have your personality shine through a guitar unless your name is Joe Perry, Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page, but Slash is definitely in that elite group. Here, on his second solo album (not including the Slash's Snakepit discs), the man proves he's assembled a backing band (and a very able lead screamer in Myles Kennedy) worthy of greasy sunset strip anthems (see the opening title track), gloriously sleazy lick-fests ("Standing in the Sun") and melodic hard rock that avoids cheese ("We Will Roam"). Unlike his last album, which was excellent but too confusing with all the guest appearances, this one is cohesive and feels like a band affair, feels like an album, feels like it has the chemistry Velvet Revolver frustratingly didn't quite have but a certain other band had once upon a time when Slash was in that crew. And what's most impressive about Apocalyptic Love is that at this late point in the man's post-Gunner career, he's managed to find a chemistry that while not quite matching Appetite for Destruction levels of magic, gets pretty darn close, at times, which is no small feat.