Gun – Favourite Pleasures (2017) Review

Good things can take time.

For Gun, it took five years of rebuilding without talismanic frontman Mark Rankin — but on Favourite Pleasures, the Scottish rockers finally hit their stride.

With towering riffs, a dense, driving rhythm section, and a show-stealing performance from Dante Gizzi, their seventh studio album captures the Glaswegian veterans at their post-Swagger peak.

Return Of The Crunch

Producer Simon Bloor returns for a second stint behind the desk, and to his credit, Favourite Pleasures feels like a direct response to the criticisms aimed at Frantic — namely its pop-leaning gloss and the scarcity of guitar heroics.

This time, Gun lean back into the crunching hard rock grooves that built their reputation, with Giuliano Gizzi and Tommy Gentry finally given the space to bite down. The riffs hit harder, the guitars sit further forward in the mix, and the solos — sharp, melodic, and unapologetically loud — reintroduce the sense of payoff that had been missing from much of the band’s reunion-era output.

Paul McManus’ drums are more prominent too, providing a pummelling backbone that gives the whole record extra weight and urgency, as though the band are playing with something to prove.

Twenty Storeys Tall

Opening track She Knows rips out of the gate, immediately setting the tone for everything that follows. Giuliano Gizzi’s stomping riff harks back to the band’s golden early-’90s run, bolstered by a gripping verse structure before a cutting solo seals the deal.

The title track Favourite Pleasures feels like the song Gun have been threatening to write ever since their 2012 comeback: tight grooves, a chorus built to stick, and some of Dante Gizzi’s most assured vocal work to date. It’s the sound of a band operating in complete synergy.

And the deeper cuts hold their own. Take Me Down delivers one of the most in-your-face riffs in the band’s catalogue, while the devilishly catchy Black Heart taps into a Gallus-like bite. Elsewhere, Tragic Heroes goes widescreen, its towering scale and chiming atmosphere feeling pulled from the orbit of U2.

Crucially, the production lets these moments hit with full weight — riffs upfront, drums loud, and solos restored to their rightful place.

"The dirty secrest that you tried to hide,
A love affair with mister third time lucky."

HERE'S WHERE I AM

Running The Show

If Break The Silence introduced Dante Gizzi as a capable replacement, Favourite Pleasures is the record where he stops sounding like a stand-in and starts sounding like the frontman.

He leans into his natural register with confidence, shaping melodies rather than simply delivering them, and his voice now feels embedded in Gun’s identity rather than sitting on top of it.

That assurance gives the band a stronger emotional centre, and they’ve clearly adjusted to the different vocal texture Gizzi brings — allowing heavier riffs and bigger choruses to land with real conviction.

One of Dante Gizzi’s biggest assets is his ability to land thought-provoking ideas in remarkably few words. On She Knows, he tackles the shock of discovering racial ugliness beneath the surface of someone he thought he understood, distilling the entire conflict into a single line: “I’m colour blind, but you’re caught in two.” It’s sharp, uncomfortable, and delivered without sermonising — proof that this heavier, bigger version of Gun now comes with a lyrical edge to match.

"I'm colour blind,
But you're caught in two."

SHE KNOWS

Not Perfect

For all its firepower, Favourite Pleasures isn’t flawless.

A couple of tracks lean a little too heavily on familiar hard rock shapes, and while the production finally restores weight and bite, there are moments where the band’s instinct for polish slightly smooths the rough edges you sometimes wish they’d leave intact.

Specifically, the ’70s-inspired Silent Lovers and the chugging Go To Hell both fail to land, and could arguably have been replaced by a surprisingly strong handful of bonus tracks left off the main record — such as the winding Come Undone or the boot-marching 20 Storeys.

That said, these are small complaints in the context of a record that so consistently hits its target, and they do little to blunt the sense that Gun have finally found their post-Swagger peak.

Gun — Favourite Pleasures

Favourite Pleasures sees Gun rightfully reclaim their place at rock’s top table.

It became the band’s biggest chart moment of the reunion era, reaching No. 16 on the UK Albums Chart and peaking at No. 3 on the UK Rock & Metal Albums Chart.

With their rhythm section back in full force, Giuliano’s riffs and solos restored to prominence, and the band now fully adjusted to Dante Gizzi’s vocal identity, Gun hit a level few would have predicted when they first returned.

It doesn’t dethrone Swagger — but it’s the closest they’ve come to that scale since.

"There's something about a song that gets in your head,
You could hear it just once and then it's hard to forget."

THE BOY WHO FOOLED THE WORLD

>> Favourite Pleasures is part of our Gun album review series.

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