Guns n’ Roses started in 1985 as a merger between two Californian bands: Hollywood Rose, founded by Axl Rose, and L.A. Guns founded by Tracii Guns. After a short period Guns left the band and restarted L.A. Guns, who are still existing. This debut album is from 1987. At first it failed to get any attention. Only during the accompanying tour did they manage to get some attention. The album skyrocketed to seventh place in the list of best selling albums in the US, and reached a worldwide sale of 22.8 million confirmed copies. Clearly I’m not the only person that has this album.
The album consists mostly of songs that they were playing separately before the band was completely formed. As a result songs are very different, although all sung by the energetic vocals of Axl Rose. The original cover art by Robert Williams also gives the album its name: it is part of a painting called Appetite for destruction, and shows a robot about to rape someone, and a metallic avenger about to stop him. The artwork was censured by record shops that didn’t want to stock the album, and a less controversial cover featuring a cross of skulls was published.