10 Rock Bands Who Never Topped Their First Album

Izzy Stradlin, Steven Adler, Axl Rose, Duff McKagan, and Slash came together in the late-'80s to revive hard rock, taking on some of the sounds of contemporaries like Mötley Crüe and Poison without succumbing to the glam stylings that had led the genre towards self-parody, and the reactionary grunge explosion of the '90s.

Appetite For Destruction was unleashed on the world with a controversial cover, a no-nonsense approach to production and 12 unimpeachable rock classics. Quite simply, it is an album with no dip, no filler tracks and no f***s given. From the iconic guitar delay opening of Welcome To The Jungle through to the lewd and totally authentic sex noises of closing track Rocket Queen, all feature killer vocals, razor-sharp riffs and cascading solos with an off-the-cuff vitality that Slash and Axl have chased for much of the rest of their careers.

But all of this came at a price. Fuelled by the album's immense success, Axl's ego left earth and never really returned, thus beginning the gradual fragmentation of the band as it strained under the weight of his self-importance. The writing on the Use Your Illusion albums (1991) is undeniably inspired, but both are bloated with a little fat, if not filler, and the youthful purity and creative charge of Guns N' Roses first record is notably absent.

The two subsequent studio albums tracked the band's demise in real time, and nothing's been the same since.