“You know where you are? You’re in the jungle baby and you’re gonna die.”

These words, uttered to Axl Rose by a homeless man when he got off a bus in the Big Apple and immortalised by the Guns N’ Roses frontman in the opening track of Appetite for Destruction, serve as as a perfect teaser for what’s to come in one of the all-time great debut albums.

From the moment Slash lures you in with the brazen intro to Welcome to the Jungle till Axl closes it out with his soaring vocals on Rocket Queen, it is a rip-roaring journey through the entirety of which, you’ll be moving in full throttle, with not a moment to catch your breath.

From Axl’s snarly vocals to Slash’s inimitable guitar tones and incendiary riffs that match the raunchy and irreverent lyrics – hearing the album on vinyl accentuates the intentional rawness and visceral hold the songs have on you.

The album itself landed like a gut-punch in 1987 and not only put Guns N’ Roses on the map, it stamped their authority on it.

It is a wormhole that sucks you in and spits you out on Sunset Boulevard for a night of juvenile delinquency, capturing perfectly the essence of Los Angeles in the 1970s and ‘80s. Sex, drugs and rock and roll – Appetite serves it all.

Legendary Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page once said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine that "a great riff is something you know instinctively. It has energy and attitude and sex."

And Slash and Izzy Stradlin followed that mantra for all the 12 tracks in the album. And that’s what stands out for me about Appetite, that there isn’t a single song that won’t have you hooked, tapping your feet and banging your head.

And on vinyl, there is a brighter spotlight on beautiful interplay between the two guitarists. Even if we look away from the more ‘massy’ songs like Sweet Child O’ Mine, Paradise City or Welcome to the Jungle, every song has killer riffs, with two guitarists complementing each other beautifully.

While it holds true for every track, I’ll use the intro to ‘Nightrain’ as an example. While Slash lays down the main riff using triads and double stops, Izzy adds the melody line using single notes which, when added to the notes Slash plays, actually form full chords. But instead of one guitarist just playing the full chords, the different tones and textures of their guitars give the song a unique kick.

And Axl, of course, did justice to the work done by the two axe-men by owning every song and putting his full vocal range on display through the course of the album. He soars in songs like Sweet Child O’ Mine and You’re Crazy, shows off his lower registers in ‘It’s So Easy’ and ‘Mr Brownstone’ and almost raps the verses in Paradise City.

And bassist Duff McKagan and drummer Steven Adler formed a formidable rhythm section, with Duff’s style of play – using a plectrum instead of finger-picking – fitting in perfectly with the fast-paced aggression of the band’s sound.

And unlike a lot of albums, Appetite goes from 0 to 100 in six seconds and stays there throughout. Even when Sweet Child O’ Mine looks like it’s calming things down, just as you’re settling in with the melodic solos after the two choruses, Slash takes the song into a crescendo with his final solo and the song eventually reaches a chaotic climax.

Appetite not only makes a case as one of the greatest debut albums, but does so as a genre-defining one. If you want to find out what ‘80s hard rock was all about in just under an hour, this G’n’R classic is your one stop shop.

By Abhimanyu Bose

Abhimanyu Bose is sports writer for ESPN cric info by profession and a guitarist by passion. He fell in love with music at the age of 11 and hasn’t looked back, grooving to rock, blues, metal and more.