BRIDES OF DESTRUCTION

There's a song near the end of "Here Come The Brides", BRIDES OF DESTRUCTION's debut album, called "Revolution", and aside from the fact that there must be dozens of tunes with that title, the irony is that calling anything here revolutionary would be like calling Dick Cheney a happy-go-lucky guy. The BRIDES — led by MÖTLEY CRÜE bassist Nikki Sixx and L.A. GUNS guitarist Tracii Guns — offer up Eighties-style hard rock with a dash of snotty L.A. punk, light on the glam but heavy on the attitude.

Which is all fine and good, but the record — a compact nine-song effort — only provides sporadic moments of inspiration and little in the way of truly electrifying rock and roll. It's commendable that Sixx, Guns, drummer Scot Coogan, and vocalist London LeGrand are sticking their middle fingers at trends and doing what they want musically, but the shopworn selection of material here generates very few real sparks.

In another unforeseen irony, it's the least swaggering song on the record, "Life", with its poppier sensibility and Beatlesque influence, that ends up being the quartet's most memorable tune. Elsewhere, hard-driving sleaze rockers like "Shut The Fuck Up" and "I Got A Gun" get the foot tapping but slip away into nothingness the moment they're done. The cliches finally fly a little too thick on "Natural Born Killers" — the inevitable rant about being a rock star — and album closer "Only Get So Far", a soggy power ballad that barely gets to the finish line.

Those nostalgic for the "good old days," when the CRÜE and fellow bad boys GUNS N' ROSES dominated the earth (sorry, Tracii, but L.A. GUNS were always sort of a day late and a dollar short),might well enjoy another trip to the rock and roll altar with these BRIDES. For the rest of us, it will probably feel more like a nostalgia fuck with the ex — ten years after you split up.