To me it's just a reminder of what each of the OG members brought to the table, and why they all needed to be present to make the magic happen.

Slash: Cock rock, Aerosmith, bluesy rock licks.
Duff: Punk, Prince-style funk, plus nascent Seattle grunge scene energy.
Izzy: Rolling Stones.
Steven: Loosey-goosey Van Halen-esque "happy rock" feel.
Axl: Queen, Elton John.

You can just about get away with losing Steven because you've still got the Duff punk-funk energy and Izzy's Stones-style rhythm.

But with the departure of Izzy and Steven you can see Axl taking more of a lead, so the pendulum starts to swing towards Queen/Elton John style Big Piano Ballads on UYI. That reaches its apotheosis with Chinese Democracy, where it's like 90% piano-driven epics with overblown layers of production.

With the new stuff, you can hear Duff throwing in some slick, snaky bass licks with that Rocket Queen energy (1:55 in Absurd, the intro and 2:55 in Hard Skool). You've obviously got Slash throwing down his signature licks, which he could do in his sleep at this point. But it's missing Izzy's Keef-esque complementary rhythms. If you listen to the riffs at 1:23 in Ghost, off the first Slash solo album, you can see how Izzy's laying down a choppy counter-rhythm that fleshes out the sound of the song.

And that's missing on Hard Skool – the rhythm (Fortus? Huge? Who fucking knows at this point) is just playing essentially the same riff as Slash. So it just sort of chugs along. And that's leaving aside the chugging drums that everyone whinges about, which I'm assuming were Frank – Brain, at least, brought that Adler swing to the band.

So, yeah, I like Hard Skool, but you can see wasted potential in it.

Anyway, as you were, back to discussing the solo album.