Motley Crue reemerges with a new album, their first in over ten years with the original and notorious lineup of Sixx, Mars, Neil, and Lee.  Easily reputed as the hardest partying band, perhaps ever, they reignite the torch for another go at the party even though they still attend to open wounds from the last one.  In their interim, they released a tell-all book called The Dirt.  The lyrics from this album take their cues from part of that autobiographical stream.  These are the self-avowed Saints of Los Angeles.

The album begins with an industrial-grade intro (L.A.M.F.) that leads into an anthemic “Face Down in the Dirt,” where the band announces in expected Crue fashion, that they’d “…rather be dead,,,rather be face down in the dirt with bullet in my head…” than to fall into a hollow existence.  The music of Crue on Saints of Los Angeles is as volatile as ever, maybe even more than their past albums.  They are like a post-apocalyptic Aerosmith in the refuse and degeneration of LA, a leader of the pack for the nihilistic set. 

Not only is the music good, the songs inflammable, but the foldout booklet is one of the better ones that I’ve seen in some time tucked into an album.  With the look of a bygone LP insert, the poster has a great snapshot of the band behind the Hollywood sign near a smoked-out hull of a car.  Looking like characters from an updated Dickens story, Motley Crue complete a bleak picture of the here and now, with the album a soundtrack to this conceptually frightening view of Los Angeles.

Motley Crue’s new album is an Rx for today’s music.  I call it the next evolutionary chapter in the band’s history.  I hope they continue with it.