The last comment I made in my review for 'Wake the Dead' was my hope that the line-up would remain the same for their next album and predictably they have let me down, this time around it's 'Tracii Guns' himself departing. Can there be an 'L.A. Guns' album without 'Tracii'? well they certainly give it a good go, new boy 'Stacey Blades' fits in well, but the strength of songwriting is not up to 'Wake the Dead' and fourteen tracks at nearly 60 minutes is too adventurous for a group who usually struggle to come up with 40 minutes worth of material. Thankfully the sound is still very faithful and there are some nice touches on an album heavily themed around L.A.'s rock scene, which the 'Gun's' themselves had a big hand in.

'Tales from the Strip' opens with the sleazy rocker 'It don't Mean Nothing' a track well within the classic 'Gun's' style, with excellent rhythm and choice guitar licks, however the more commercial sounding chorus possibly takes the edge off the track for me. The tempo soften for the well executed 'Electric Neon Sunset', a cleverly penned effort, with a 'Cinderella' style moody approach. Following strongly is the pulsating 'Gypsy Soul' a simplistic but effective mid tempo rocker that rides along a grooving rhythm and is braced by fine 'Stacey Blades' guitaring. Next up is 'Original Sin' and after a sublime introduction, descents into mediocrity, while the balladsy 'Vampire' is passionately performed but lyrically inept and ultimately dull. Even less impressive is the repetitive 'Hollywood's Burning', 'Phil Lewis' does the lyric no justice and the only saving grace is a fine instrumental break. A surprise addition is the instrumental '6.9 Earthshaker', you don't really associate 'L.A. Guns' with instrumentals, regrettably though this 'Steve Riley' driven piece is listless and at length falls well short of the mark. Also struggling to make an impact is the pedestrian riff driven 'Rox Baby Girl,' while the lively but slightly crude 'Crazy Motorcycle' promises with it's energetic approach and excellent solo. 'Skin' opens up with a dark rhythmical intro reminiscent of work by the 'Stones' but soon degenerates into a pretty unrefined contemporary rocker. More in the classic 'L.A. Gun's' vein is the vigorous and sleazy 'Shame' a good solid number, full of attitude, driving rhythm and snarling vocals. Not quite on target is the uneven 'Resurrection', that both promises and disappoints, while the second instrumental, the acoustic 'Amaneger' is a nice piece but in all honesty just album filler. The final track brings about 'Anything Better than Love' and is little more than a laboured mid tempo affair, although 'Phil Lewis' turns in a fine performance, this is still pretty mediocre.

This is'nt the follow up to 'Wake the Dead' I was hoping for and while the band has put in a lot of effort, there are not enough highlights and far too many average tracks to compete with the predecessor or even their early work.