Track Listing

Review

Released simultaneously with it's sister recording, Use Your Illusion 2 shares many of part 1's successes and failings while managing to maintain a coherency and identity of it's own, distinct and separate from the first part. Overblown, pretentious, strewn with gems yet littered with fillers - the description can apply in equal measures to both releases and yet this is maybe not the damning criticism it first seems. Songs such as Civil War (Steven Adler's only performance on either volume) and Estranged are further proof of the raising of ideals beyond mere rock band status, Axl's hero worship of Freddie Mercury and Elton John is as obvious here as in November Rain and yet the band are still not afraid to get down and rock out with songs such as You Could Be Mine and Pretty Tied Up (again Izzy Stradlin's influence) showing their true rock foundations. Old criticisms of Illusion1 come to bear here as well though. Why include an altered lyric version of Don't Cry when the original is so much better and included on Illusion 1? The vitriolic tirade in Get In The Ring is pure pantomime and is perhaps more suited to a band like Kiss; Guns N' Roses were surely not supposed to be some 'made for T.V.' rock band, hamming it up at any opportunity just to cause some orchestrated outrage. The inclusion of Axl's mini rap "My World" is the most embarrassing addition, a dire experiment gone wrong which only serves to show how far Axl's overbearing influence had come to bear on the band.

Overall, Illusion 2 is a fine rock n' roll album containing some classic songs. Yet it just misses the spark to make it a classic in it's own right. There is somewhat an element of deja vu in this appraisal as it exactly mirrors that expressed with regards Use Your Illusion1. If the great songs on both had been included on one album there would have been no fuel for the "Guns N' Roses did nothing after Appetite For Destruction" brigade, although a listen to November Rain, Coma, Don't Cry, Civil War and Estranged to name but a few instantly destroy this myth. Another major statement from hard rock's greatest purveyors, it falls slightly short, understandably, when compared to the greatest album ever released. In reality their greatest triumph, in Appetite For Destruction, was always going to be the mill stone around their necks when trying to better it. 

Review by Alan Hylands

Use Your Illusion II is more serious and ambitious than  part I, but it's also considerably more pretentious. Featuring no less than four songs that run over six minutes, II is heavy on epics, whether it's the charging funk-metal of "Locomotive," the anti-war "Civil War," or the multi-part "Estranged." As if an attempt to balance the grandiose epics, the record is loaded with an extraordinary amount of filler. "14 Years" may have a lean, Stonesy rhythm, and Duff McKagan's Johnny Thunders homage "So Fine" may be entertaining, but there's no forgiving the ridiculous "Get in the Ring," where Axl threatens rock journalists by name because they gave him bad reviews; the misinterpretation of Dylan's "Knockin' On Heaven's Door";another version of "Don't Cry"; and the bizarre closer "My World," which probably captures Axl's instability as effectively as the tortured poetry of his epics. That said, there are numerous strengths to Use Your Illusion II; a couple of songs have a nervy energy, and for all their pretensions, the overblown epics are effective, though strangely enough, they reveal notorious homophobe Axl's aspirations of being a cross between Elton John and Freddie Mercury. But the pompous production and poor pacing make the album tiring for anyone who isn't a dedicated listener.

Review from www.allmusic.com