Metal, Hardcore, Indie, Rock
Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash discussed the band’s recently released “Atlas” and “Nothin’” in a recent interview with Sylvia Alvarado of the Las Vegas radio station KOMP 92.3, as per Blabbermouth. The songs were the first new GN’R songs since the 2023 singles “The General” and “Perhaps” when they were released in December. Axl Rose of Guns N’ Roses and Caram Costanzo (Janet Jackson, Rage Against The Machine) produced “Atlas” and “Nothin’“; Costanzo and Rose also co-produced Guns N’ Roses’ most recent album, “Chinese Democracy” from 2008.
It’s good to have a couple of songs that we’re promoting and then a tour that’s really a long tour. It’s gonna go from the end of March until the end of December. And it’s exciting, ’cause we’re coming back to the U.S., which is the first time we’ve been in the U.S. in a while.
When asked if there are still intentions to produce a new full-length album or if Guns N’ Roses intends to make new music available going forward through the release of standalone singles, Slash responded as follows.
I think in this instance it’s what we’re doing, because we only re-recorded those songs — like a couple of songs here, a couple of songs there. These were the last two that are left to do, and we actually did them not even back to back. ‘Nothin” was one, and ‘Atlas’ was at a different time, but they hadn’t been released yet. So, we’re releasing ’em now. And then there’s really no more of that sort of old rehash stuff to release. But I think what we’re gonna do, we’re gonna take all those songs and put them on something and release that as a package. And then the next record that we’re gonna do is gonna be all new original stuff, and that’ll be an actual album.
It’s a really weird time for especially rock and roll and how it works in this industry and how it works for fans. I think most die-hard rock and roll fans would like to get an album and they love vinyl, but they would want a package of songs. But some of the younger kids who are sort of raised in this new fancy kind of digital era that we’re in don’t know about albums, really, being released as a whole. So it’s a strange time. It’s harder to navigate. But to me, it’s a no-brainer. Make a record. You can do all the digital stuff in any configuration you want. But make sure that there’s an album. Yeah.
Slash replied like this about the recently released Guns N’ Roses songs which had previously existed in the Guns realm, with “Atlas” having previously been known as “Atlas Shrugged.”
Well, we took a bunch of material that Axl had, and we all sat down and listened to it. And so we sort of picked out all the different songs that we wanted to do and what Axl wanted to do. And we just sort of took all the guitars and the bass off and redid it. And it was fun. And it was the kind of thing where we did one song at a time. We did one or maybe two in the same week. But for the most part it was spread out over a long period of time. So it was just something fun to do and go, ‘Okay, what’s gonna be my approach for it?’ So each one of ’em has been an interesting sort of little project.
He explained more about the two singles.
‘Atlas’ has some really cool chord changes and time signatures, so that was interesting in itself. And then coming up with the right voicings for that. With ‘Nothin”, it was a very spontaneous, very sort of simple, bare-bones approach. Not much thought went into it at all. It was just improvising.
Slash continued by saying that he is excited to play “Atlas” and “Nothin’” when Guns N’ Roses goes on tour again in March.
Well, we were gonna [play] ’em [live] both — I guess it was a couple of years ago, or a little over a year ago,” he explained. “And we were gonna do ’em both, and we actually rehearsed them and they sound great live and it was really fun. But then we decided that we didn’t know when we were gonna release these songs and we didn’t end up releasing them then. So we had to take them out of the set and wait. So we’re excited to go to play ’em now finally the songs are released.
“Atlas” and “Nothin’” showcase two distinct facets of Guns N’ Roses’s character.
“Atlas” is GN’R in full surging rock mode, while “Nothin'”grows more introspective over floaty keys and an emotive guitar.
