10 Great Songs On Otherwise Terrible Albums
5. Shackler's Revenge - Guns N Roses
The legend regarding Chinese Democracy by Guns N Roses made it seem like the worst album ever made before it had even come out. By the time it was eventually released in 2008, many people had already had their fill of the constant waiting for Axl Rose's grand vision to come into being. Though this album sounds like it was labored over for years at a time, Shackler's Revenge was still fairly compelling upon first listen.
Right off the bat, you know this isn't going to be your typical GNR song, with guitars that sound like they were ripped straight out of a horror movie. Centered around a lick that sounds like a snake slithering across your speakers, Axl's gruff vocals actually feel much more suited to a song like this, almost sounding like he's trying on his Marilyn Manson impression before exploding into the chorus.
Though the chorus itself sounds like it was cobbled together from different takes across different decades, the larger than life production makes it feel like the whole thing is meant to be blared out over an arena of screaming fans, albeit with a bit less polish than something like Appetite for Destruction. While this album gets nowhere close to something like Welcome to the Jungle, this is the kind of experiment that has a lot more hits than it does misses.