Cocked & Loaded by LA Guns

Cocked & Loaded, the second album from L.A. Guns, hit the racks on Vertigo on August 22, 1989, barely a year after their debut, and it is the first with Steve Riley, the ex-W.A.S.P. drummer who completed what became known as the classic lineup: Tracii Guns and Mick Cripps on guitars, Kelly Nickels, late of Faster Pussycat, on bass, and former Girl singer Phil Lewis sneering out front. Duane Baron, John Purdell and Tom Werman shared the production chores across three Hollywood studios, One on One, Music Grinder and Conway.

All five split the writing credits, with Gregg Tripp and Phil Roy helping out on "Never Enough". It is sleazy Hollywood hard rock with the rough edges left on, from the snarl of "Rip and Tear" to the slow-dance heartache of "The Ballad of Jayne", which climbed to number 33 on the Hot 100. The album went gold in 1990, and years later Consequence slotted it onto a list of hair metal albums that don't suck.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.