Brides of Destruction

It doesn’t take much to make a “supergroup” these days. Like a bad reality-TV show, Brides of Destruction matches a pair of Los Angeles hair-metal has-beens (Mötley Crüe founder Nikki Sixx and L.A. Guns ax man Tracii Guns) with Scot Coogan, whose primary claim to fame is a stint as the touring drummer for boy-band All 4 One. Handling vocal duties is a brash unknown with the perfect porn-star moniker London Le Grand. The result? A rocket-fueled romp through garage-metal that never really takes off. Styled upon high-octane blasters like the Murder City Devils, it’s refreshing to know that Sixx and company don’t succumb to the expected cheese-metal riffs and dumb-brained misogyny, but songs such as “Natural Born Killers” and “Revolution” feel contrived coming from a middle-class quartet whose collective age is well over 100. The youthful Le Grand does a fair imitation of metal greats such as Bon Scott and Axl Rose, but he never finds his own voice — a criticism that’s easily extended to the entire Brides project.