This CD is available in three different coloured covers--white, red and black. Amazon.co.uk Contraband, the debut album from Velvet Revolver (who include three ex-members of Guns 'n' Roses>, arrives with both a great deal of expectation and a great deal of baggage. That's the trouble with "supergroups": there's always the difficulty of stepping out of the shadows of the members' previous bands, and keeping old fans happy while appealing to new ones. Lead singer Scott Weiland gets off easy: he used to be in Stone Temple Pilots, widely regarded as an adequate, second-string rock band (in spite of selling millions of records in their native USA) due to the simple fact that they tended towards mediocrity. Not so his new bandmates Slash, Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum, who as members of raised the standard for rock music in the early 1990s. Judged against G 'n' R's peak, Contraband can't fail to disappoint. But it's important to remember that even Guns 'n' Roses never recaptured their Appetite for Destruction heyday, and at the very least, Contraband is better than The Spaghetti Incident. Sure, there are a number of tracks that sound too much like contemporary American, radio-friendly rock-by-numbers, but "Do It for the Kids" and "Big Machine" recall UK rock stalwarts the Wildhearts, with shouted lyrics and punky guitars. "Fall to Pieces" is a classic lighters-in-the-air ballad, all emotional build up and crashing crescendo, while "Set Me Free" boasts one of Slash's best-ever guitar riffs (no mean feat for the man behind "Sweet Child of Mine"). The pleasures of Contraband aren't always immediate, but they are there. It's just that they're often buried under the weight of the band members' histories. --Robert Burrow This album comes with three randomly selected cover colours.