We would not be too easy to succumb to the temptation to try to detect traces of Guns, traces of Stone Temple Pilots and everything. We should understand this group as a novelty of the genre, an entity to consume as such and yet ... I must say that the voice of Scott Weiland does not really help to detach us from original sin. It must also be said that the group, as a whole, does nothing to really dispel the idea that this group is a mixture of two (sic). We would not make the comparison, but the image of Audioslave, it seems to impose itself and, it seems to me, as surprising as that may be, the group rather pulls STP, to the point that the game is so characteristic of Slash (since it's him another sacred monster of this "super group") sometimes seems to dissolve into the mass.
Does it make of 'Contraband' a bad album? Far from me the thought. Instead, the disc is the least homogeneous and guys Velvet demonstrate with this album they have nothing to envy to the rising wave of groups practicing a kind of Emo Punk. That in fact it provided an anthology album produced by a "super" group. No more. Time will pass on this disc as on many others, but in the meantime, it serves its purpose well.