"On Your Knees, but To Hail or Heave?"

Prolific underground rockers The Dillinger Escape Plan, Eighteen Visions, Every Time I Die, Death By Stereo and a slew of other musical monstrosities provide covers for "Bring You to Your Knees: A Tribute to Guns n' Roses."

From track to track, the album is hit or miss. To think what some of the best names in the metal/hardcore business could do with some of the catchiest hard rock songs ever written is even better than the thought of a new G 'n' R album. Most of the bands, though, had to play well outside their normal musical zones to get through the song they chose.

Zombie Apocalypse starts the album with the obligatory opener, "Welcome to the Jungle." They play their rendition with a hardcore/punk tempo, much faster than the original, and the time of the track is reduced to just over two minutes.

Almost half of the bands change the songs to such an extent that it is less like listening to a tribute than it is a set of rearrangements. Dillinger is most guilty of this, as they take "My Michelle" and restructure it to such an extent that the chorus - the finest part of the original - is unrecognizable.

There are numerous positives on the album, however. Break the Silence's "Nightrain" is excellent, complete with the cowbell intro. They make it slightly heavier, with hardcore screams in the chorus, an improvement on the original. Eighteen Visions take a similar approach to "Paradise City," tacking on a fine-tasting breakdown at the end.

Time In Malta's "November Rain" is good, at least instrumentally, as long as fans are willing to accept a version more suited to be played in a dive bar than a stadium.

What separates the good covers from the bad on this album is an ability to replace Rose's anthemic pipes. The monotone scream works for Most Precious Blood on "Sweet Child of Mine," but none of the others who use it. Every Time I Die's Keith Buckley falls well short of Axl's tone. Whether this is intentional or not is hard to say, but either way, it is deplorable.

While the album isn't all it could be, the sheer nostalgia of the purchase, along with a few very good performances, makes "Bring You to Your Knees" worth the coin.