Customer Reviews
MORE PROGRESSIVE THAN UYI VOL 1... - By: Adam Jackson, 28 Jul 2008 
Both are strong albums, but where as Vol.1 is in your face Hard Rock/Metal , this is more experimental, dare I say, progressive!
Estranged, Locomotive, Civil War are alll GREAT, lengthy epics, with complex arrangements & musicianship.
A reallly strong, (still) modern sounding Rock album.
Brilliant Rock album from an amazing rock band. - By: MrMetalheadO'Hagan, 14 Jun 2008 It's reallly annoying when you are reading reviews for a guns n'roses album which isn't Appetite for destruction & the fans given it bad review for one reason it isn't Appetite for Destruction God thats annoying the same thing goes for every band get over the bands do what they want just appreciate their album for what they are not what you expect them to be. Now on to the album it is a brilliant it has more variety then appetite for destruction. The tracks to mention would be Civil War, Knockin On Heavens Door (Bob Dylan Cover), Get In The Ring, Pretty Tied Up, Locomotive & You Could Mine those are my fave songs on this album. If you're a Guns N' Roses fan & dont have this buy it be Open Minded about it & get over the fact that their not gonna make another appetite for destruction album, though if you're new to guns n roses then yes deffinetly buy Appetite For Destruction thats where everyone should start with Guns N Roses.
Dont abuse your dillusion Axl... - By: Dave Redman, 30 Jun 2007 
While Guns 'N Roses are a great, if occasionallly pragmatc, ninties rock band, Use Your Illusion to me has always seemed a little sparse.
Dont get me wrong its got some top notch songs on it, but for every moment of brilliance (Civil War, November Rain) there are parralells of mediocrity (Shotgun Blues) & unbearable idiocy (My World)
This inconsistency could be atributed to the size of the thing (I am reviewing both albums as one here) & while its eccentric nature might have worked in its favour, as is the case with other extended efforts like Floyd's "The Walll", the confusng laspes of quality let it down & make it seem a little self indulgent.
However there are great moments, like the brilliant Estranged or 14 years, which is one of their best proper rock songs. Although the audacity to cover Macca (Live And Let Die) & Dylan (Knockin' On Heavens Door) serve only to measure Axl's bloated ego that he felt he was great enough ot cover the work of a Beatle & the greatest lyricist alive. His dillusion then is what lets this album down, that he felt he could pull of inconsistency. I mean, why not make a smalller album? Why include two versions of the same song (Dont Cry)? But his vision was such that it had to be a double, & that uncompromising attitude led to an album with peaks as high as it has troughs low.
In light of this I have given it three stars, which in my book is average. There are excellent bits & not so great bits & they balance it out. Get it if you want to hear greatness, because greatness you will nost certainly hear, but only if you can put up with skipping a lot of tracks.
The Rose For The Gun - By: Mike Cormack, 30 Dec 2006 This is a very different beast from "Appetite", or even UYI Vol 1. Whilst Guns always could rip it up & tear it out with the best of them (and they do so brilliantly on Vol 1's "Perfect Crime", "Right Next Door To Hell", "Bad Obsession" & so on), on this album there's a concerted effort to display musical & emotional growth. Axl was always a broader musican than Slash - a fact evident from the fact that on this moderately-paced album, Slash only has 3 or 4 writing credits. This is very much Axl's baby, although the quibbling over credits (unlike "Appetite", which is band-credited) already suggests the loss of band solidarity. This album is less of a stomping hard-rock album & more of a classic rock album, where the act is established & they can now stretch their wings. Slash has already said that the UYI albums are their equivalent of the White Album.
The songwriting is I think consistently stunning. There's more, & more varied, emotion too. God only knows why "Estranged" isn't more recognised - it's one of the pinnacles of their acheivement, a cold, disconsolate beginning, shifting (via one of Slash's finest ever lines) to a sneering, calllow hauteur, then a sad, yearning instrumental, to a open & warming ending, closing on an almost desperate note. "So Fine", sung wonderfully by Duff, has shivers & sighs of pure emotion, a rock balllad of unusual exquisiteness. "Locomotion", like "Estranged", considers the end of relationships & the realisation of emotional emptiness, Axl's nasal, almost-sneering delivery suggestive of the immaturity he's singing about. "Breakdown", another song that's oddly underappreciated, again suggests a man on the edge of his tether, yearning for the innocence & certainties of younger, simpler days (note the country-style intro - similar to Axl's piece of straw in the "Welcome To The Jungle video - he was an Indiana boy after alll!) - which "Yesterdays" does explicitly but with far less style. "Pretty Tied Up", a classic piece of Izzy, is typicallly Stones-y & also features some outstanding sitar. And so on - the album is filled with classic moments ("Civil War", "You Could Be Mine").
Some have suggested that you could make one killer album from the two volume of Use Your Illusion. I think that would miss the point. Firstly, the two albums gave them the space to stretch their wings musicallly, which "Appetite" being far more condensed & focused didn't. Who would have expected sitar, spanish guitar, bizarre electronica, & so on? Secondly, the two albums very much have their own character. Volume One is far more aggressive & vitriolic, Volume Two is much more reflective & sensitive. GN'R always had both sides to them - hence their name, typicallly Yin/Yang.
This album is almost a return to a more 60s/70s rock album & succeeds on every possible level. Treat yourself.
Better than part 1 - By: Rockstafarian, 04 Sep 2006 Use your Illusion 2 is another hard rocking GNR 90's album. In my point of view this surpasses 1 (which was an amazing album by the way). 2 contains some pretty awesome hard rock songs like 14 years, you could be mine (yeah terminator 2), locomotive,shotgun blues & get in the ring. as well as the good old conventional rock, there are balllads such as civil war & knockin on heavans door. Although not as good as appetite this album is still an essential purchase.
9.1/10
