BBC reviews Chinese Democracy
BBC
by Dennis O'Dell
14 November 2008
In the 15 years it's taken for Axl and co. to get these 14 tracks together the costs have spiralled so precipitously (and downloading habits have changed the market so massively) that Chinese Democracy will, in all probability, never make a profit. So, weirdly, in refusing to be hurried, and despite turning it into probably the last great rock folly of our times, now-46-year-old Axl Rose may have actually done something quite significant: struck a blow for the artist. Of course, this all hangs on whether Chinese Democracy is any good. At a work rate of less than a track a year you'd expect something awesome, wouldn't you? Well, it IS. By this we mean it's epic, preposterously overarching and all the things you'd expect from the ego that ate Sunset Strip.
This is an album with literally a cast of thousands. collaborations begun, dropped, seeds of ideas, mere trains of thought, they all get name checked in the sleeve notes. So yes, guitar freaks, Buckethead's here, and so is Brian May (Catcher In The Rye), and so are about twenty other guitarists. Piano ballads (Sorry), sweeping strings (adding just the right amount of throat lumpiness to Madagascar), multi-tracked shredding mayhem - it's all on tap. And on top the grizzled yelp that seems just as good as ever.
And don't let anyone tell you that Axl hasn't been keeping up with trends. A song like Better, starts with an r 'n' b-lite loop under a lonely voice; If The World's skittering beats and spanish guitar make it most danceable: expect a few illicit remixes to hit the clubs sometime soon. But that was always GnR's strength - they rocked hard, but they also had a canny eye on the big prize. Watching whether their universal brand still holds good after all this time will be a fascinating game to play in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
Of course there are times when Axl's perversity does over-egg things. Some tracks take a good minute or two setting up just the right mood while Madagascar's samples of both Martin Luther King AND Coolhand Luke are perplexing. But then you're dumped headfirst into the metal mayhem of something like Rhiad And The Bedouins and you remember why you loved this band all those years ago.
At the centre of all this sits Rose, suddenly big news again and amazingly able to hold up Chinese Democracy as at least the equal of all the talk its creators have been bandying about. No, it won't change the world and it doesn't contain any major innovations. But it's still a huge triumph in the face of overwhelming odds. You can breathe again now...
source: BBC
Roaring rampage of redemption – Chinese Democracy review **** 1/2
Chinese Democracy
By Peter Venkman
In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgement. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new.
The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends. These past couple of days, I have experienced something new, some extraordinary music, but from a singularly "old" source. To say that both the music and the performers behind it have challenged my preconceptions about rock n' roll is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core.(*)
If ever there was an album that needed to win friends, it's Chinese Democracy.
To even listen to this album without the collective weight of over a decade of anticipation and hype is almost impossible, and its actual existence is universally predetermined as a letdown. That is until you hear it.
The first Guns N' Roses album of original material since 1993 is the musical equivalent of the Kill Bill movies, but Axl Rose gets to do one up on Quentin Tarantino; his sprawling epic isn't chopped up - it lands as a lean, mean killing machine of hard rock glory.
Imagine the tasty mom and pop scene in Kill Bill Volume Two fragmented by the bloodspattering swordfight centerpiece from Volume One and translate it all to music. Like Tarantinos roaring rampages of cinematic revenge, Democracy evokes genuine emotion beneath the pomp and the circumstance. It's operatic, misanthropic, celebratory, bizarre, electrifying.
The album really exists out of time. Part arty-hearty freakshow, part stylistic melting pot, part diving Hindenburg but it also - amazingly - sounds like a Guns N' Roses record. Clearly the product of a distinctive artistic vision, more compelling than coherent, it offers a roadmap lush with musical depth and originality. This is music with the richness of great fiction.
Nuances are revealed through repeated listens but unlike some of it's peers - Dark Side of the Moon, Physical Graffiti, Queen II, Achtung Baby, OK Computer, Smile and yes, GNR's own brimming Use Your Illusion discs - Democracy never goes down beaten paths but trots out across uncharted territory.
In the end, it's the sum of its parts. Those parts being what constitutes Guns N' Roses today; Paul Tobias, Tommy Stinson, Chris Pitman, Robin Finck, Dizzy Reed and Axl Rose, all of whom have contributed to the songwriting and performances as a band. Others include Buckethead, Ron 'Bumblefoot' Thal, Richard Fortus and drummers Brian 'Brain' Mantia and Frank Ferrer. Characterizing everyone is shrewd technical ability and a more or less indie background. Which is far removed from the mainstream monster that Guns N' Roses had become.
Democracy will therefore sound testy to contemporary ears and it may shock the waiting vampires and Sunset strippers who long for green grass, pretty girls and paradise cities. Not merely a blend of traditional rock sensibilities, punk expressiveness and pop bravado but a damn-the-torpedoes fusion of whatever works and is within radar, it's still experimental without being oblique. Add Rose's snake-dance danger and his penchant for piano-themed hymns and the result is a sonic landscape as far as the eye can see - and ear can hear. The band has toured twice since Rose began serious work on this album around 1997, and have displayed a rare vitality on stage all but missing from rock n' roll today.
Rest assured, the passage of time nor alleged trauma has not eroded the gingerhaired's artistic instincts or vocal capabilities. In fact, Rose sounds positively sane and clearheaded throughout, neither engulfed by rage or fueled by bitter regret. Okay, it's not like he doesn't set the record straight or has softened his attitude. No, no. This is his return, his moment and his answer to, as that old GNR song went, "14 years of silence".
Millions of dollars spent, thousands of headlines later and more than a decade underway, it's hard deciding on what's most surreal: the neverending media spun controversy and personal attacks on Rose - or the silence from the accused. The idiocy displayed by uninformed, unresearched and prejudiced journalists over the years has been mindboggling and warrants some soulsearching.
The reality is, that Democracy is worth getting for one song alone. Check out the slowburning Sorry, the most evocative and haunting personal reply ever put to music since John Lennon wrote How Do You Sleep? about Paul McCartney. Rose literally takes ex-guitarist Slash apart piece by piece, displaying an emotional and vocal cadence that sucks you in like a tractor beam. "To hell with the pressure, I'm not caving in," recites Rose, finally going public with the cross he'll always carry by keeping the band name. As in: where's Slash?
"Nobody owes you, not one goddamn thing," he sneers to a morphine-slowed kickdrum beat, as the lazy Toni Iommi'sh guitar groove sways. "You close your eyes, all well and good, you tell them stories they'd rather believe, use and confuse them, they're numb and naive," Rose intimately tells everybody's favorite Guitar Hero. The listener is unwillingly catapulted to a state of eavesdropping. Rose then tightens the message and looks his former friend and bandmate in the eye - for a second, echoing emotional rescue - "What were you thinking? Because I don't forget."
That's the crux. Rose figures he won this war of attrition not because he held out, but because he was always true to himself. Time is of no consequence in his world. The most daunting lyric on the album, also from Sorry, shakes off the flack that's constantly headed in his very direction: "Truth is, the truth hurts, don't you agree?" Ouch. In that sense, everything on Democracy is counterbalanced by the pathos of Rose - a songwriter, singer and performer who, let's face it, is Jim Morrison's heir. Both were driven by inner demons and genuine spite, both were in direct conflict with their audience and fans. Rose's never-changing battle to remain an auteur in a celebrity world increasingly hostile to such individualists has become a performance in itself. Morrison fled to Paris and he unfortunately never made it back. Rose holed up in his Malibu mansion, went AWOL for seven years and "Axl-sightings" were invented. He has now returned.
So, it's time to listen to the music. And there's a lot of great music here. The groove oriented Better is an instant classic. Dirty hard rock swagger with rollicking clout and a hook to die for. Easily the catchiest tune the band has made this side of Sweet Child O' Mine. Nobody does it better.
The pounding disco (yes, disco) of Shackler's Revenge ("Don't ever try and tell me how much you care for me,") and the stressful, scream-chorus inferno of Riad N' The Bedouins rivals the best of The Sex Pistols, ELO, Boston and The Who. Dissolved, punchy hard rock with clarity and purpose that bends but never breaks. The guzzling and schizofrenic Scraped is introed by an a-cappella vocal chorale before it runs amok ("Don't you try and stop us now!"). If The World is Miami Vice-sleaze mixed with funky blaxsploitation metal topped off with a scorching Buckethead. Remarkable stuff.
The Beatlesque and happy-go-lucky Catcher in the Rye is beatific, complete with "na-na-na's", in sharp contrast to the abrasive lyrics that encompass both the book, the John Lennon murder, the concept of mortality and what sounds like undertones of anguish, regret and maybe even child abuse. Ron Thal hits the ground running with beehive guitar while the vocals sound like they're whitewater rafting. It's a deceitful, little devil this.
"If I thought that I was crazy, well I guess I'd have more fun, it's what used to be's not there for me," croons an introspective Rose, part Mark David Chapman, part Holden Caulfield, part J.D. Salinger and part estranged rock n' roll icon.
There Was A Time is the monolithic album "halftime show". Almost seismic in its complexity, the melody is never buried, only built upon, layer after layer, "all the way from California.. and your ways around the laws", with chickenplucking guitar by Buckethead, a chanting Axl and a choir of angels to start the party. Old tales of broken relationships along the PCH and deep in to the flickering L.A. night, right down to the broken glass, the cigarettes and snorting coke in a stall. A melodic and lyrical triumph.
As the album draws to a close, everything suddenly stops. Here comes the lugubrious This I Love, probably Rose's finest moment yet. Written back in 1993, he's been sitting on this baby forever. Allegedly, it's the final chapter to the saga of Don't Cry, November Rain and Estranged, linked together in spirit and story only through their accompanying self-indulgent videos from the early 90s, two of which starred Rose's then girlfriend, Stephanie Seymour. Stripped of anything but the bare essentials, this open wound farewell to Seymour features Rose on piano, in a shattering meltdown of a ramshackle voice, and lavish string-bending sensuality from Finck. "Please God you must
believe me, I searched the universe and found myself within her eyes," cries Rose like an air raid horn before B-52s carpetbomb with autographed Blood On The Tracks CDs. Yes, it's enough to make grown men cry and undeniable proof of Rose's prestige. It rubs you raw, leaves you dizzy. Fantastic.
Earlier, the symphonic Street of Dreams actually revisits the Seymour break-up in tantalizing fashion: Rose's fire-siren yelp is here underscored by a Broadway setup of Billy Joel taking a crap at the Honolulu Bar(**). This is a positive. "What I thought was beautiful, don't live inside of you," schreeches Rose before Finck's strangulated blues gothguitar once again wields in and out and all around, sometimes headbutting Stinson's staccato punk bass. The musicianship on this record is unparalleled.
"That's not stardust at my feet, it leaves a taste that's bittersweet, that's called the blues." Melodic to a fault and dramatized to perfection.
But there is not just heartbreak here, there is also a vicious clinging to love's promise and the fight-to-the-death belief in purity of truth. The slow-moving majesty of Madagascar evokes spiritual optimism and sounds like Leonard Cohen, circa The Future, fronting Led Zeppelin at Tiananman Square. A deeply personal tune ("I won' be told anymore, that I've been caught down in this storm, that I lived so far out from the shore, that I can't find my way back anymore") in light of everything the band has been through since the golden days, Madagascar transcends as a universal weltschmertz anthem that offers intellectual musings far removed from mere rock n' roll muscle and pop poetics.
An exercise in consolidation, equity and continuity ("Forgive them that tear down my soul, bless them that they might grow old") the analogy of its title goes hand in hand with ingenious movie sample choices (Braveheart, Se7en, Mississippi Burning, Casualties of War) that are mixed effortlessly with sound bites from Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Somewhere, DJ Shadow is smiling.
Rose uses - not his illusions - but allusions as rhetorical weapons, ultimately revealing his convictions and the star by which he sails. It's Elisabeth Drewian at heart. The world is not run by thought, nor by imagination, but by opinion. And that can be a tough place for any self-contained artist that is not for sale.
Again, Rose, now 46, didn't wait this long for his own enjoyment or vanity. To him, the circumstances simply dictated or instituted the wait and/or gestation period. Whatever one might agree or disagree with in this matter - and however one views Rose personally - is of no consequence. Because the music is here and it plays like a roaring rampage of rock n' roll redemption. The best kind.
"Ask yourself, why I would choose, to prostitute myself, to live with fortune and shame," he commands on the album closer, appropriately titled Prostitute, that literally sizzles with evocative piano, fat beats by Brain and sumptuous manifest guitar by Buckethead.
That just may be Democracy's grandest achievement; Rose manages to re-direct all the venom, hatred, frustration and bile back at the instigators. He's encouraging you to find the proof in the pudding yourself. As he tells Slash; "It's harder to live with the truth about you, than to live with the lies about me." So put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Great music will never be denied, and one could therefore say that Axl Rose wins.
In overtime.
Rating: * * * * ½ (4½ out of 5
Epoch Times reviews Chinese Democracy: “Warm applause for long-awaited album”
Chinese Democracy
The Epoch Times reviewed Chinese Democracy. This is what they had to say:
"Let me be frank. I wasn’t too optimistic about the new Guns N’ Roses album,Chinese Democracy. After constant delays, numerous lineup changes, and a clamor surrounding the band, I was only slightly curious to see what all the fuss has been about up until now. But, by the time the second track, Shackler’s Revenge, purged the speaker with its hip, futuristic guitar growl nestled sweetly underneath Axl Rose’s surprisingly baritone introduction, I was intrigued, to say the least.
A lot of hype and controversy has surrounded GNR’s first album of original material since 1991. Purists would argue that with Rose as the only original member and without lead guitarist Slash and rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin, the band is too far from its original dynamic to produce songs of their previous caliber. I initially sided with that idea, but upon further investigation, I began to doubt that opinion. Wasn’t Slash’s follow-up band, Velvet Revolver, a comparative dud, never producing any memorable moments comparable to the GNR legacy?
And what about the newsworthy title track/single, Chinese Democracy? One thing is definite—Axl Rose has kept his 46-year-old rebellious spirit alive and breathing, as the song Chinese Democracy brings to light the Chinese Communist Party’s massive state-wide persecution of the Falun Gong spiritual meditation practice. Chinese authorities have banned the album throughout China, dubbing the title and content an “attack” on the Party. The CCP was also probably a little unseated with the line, “If your Great Wall rocks, blame yourself.” Kudos, Mr. Rose.
So, what about the content? All the staple GNR moments have gallantly returned with the signature guitar tones, the epic production, and Rose’s unmatchable vocal range which hits the tape in a precise and flavorful fashion.
Every facet of Chinese Democracy is polished—perhaps a little too polished. But looking back to the Use Your Illusion days, so was the production on that record. Andy Wallace, who mixed Nirvana’s Nevermind and a host of others successful albums, was pivotal in constructing a crisp and solid mix that is crystal clear and challenges the listener’s eardrum capacity.
The first three tracks of Chinese Democracy spilled a fierce and heavy cauldron of sonically astute rock and roll energy front and center inside my brain. Better crept up on me with a scratchy cyberpunk intro that hypnotically swelled into the kind of forgotten quality I’ve been looking for in rock and roll as of late—emotion.
The lyrics and arrangements were especially inspiring and fluid leading up to a bridge that was not only a dropkick assault of heavy guitars but also schooled 90 percent of the music I’ve heard in the last year. I was hooked, my body was in motion, and I was mouthing the lyrics all the way until the end.
The album switches gears for the next few tracks in which Axl breaks out the piano along with his Pro Tools, audio workstation. The production-and-effects-layered Street of Dreams and If the World are traditional classic rock, ballad fare, and have a few catchy parts, but they are not the disc’s strongest pieces. Madagascar is a poetic glance about choice and freedom, in which dozens of audio samples paint the landscape of the song.
One thing to be noted about Chinese Democracy is that many of the tracks require more than one swallowing. I was kind of scoff-ish toward This I Love and Catcher and the Rye but after a few listens, I could feel the tracks growing on me like a rosy fungus.
The bottom line is, Chinese Democracy is a unique experience that holds true to the Guns N’ Roses of old and doesn’t fall victim to the doubtful shadows cast from before. One part defiant rocker, one part somber revolutionary, and equal part fresh, magnetic creativity, the new GNR delivers a stellar punch that rivals any of the rock and roll of 2008."
Chuck Klosterman reviews Chinese Democracy
November 19th, 2008
Guest reviewer Chuck Klosterman is the author of five books, including Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey In Rural North Dakota and the new novel Downtown Owl. There is no one in the world more qualified to review the exhaustingly anticipated new Guns N' Roses album than he is.
Chuck Klosterman
Reviewing Chinese Democracy is not like reviewing music. It's more like reviewing a unicorn. Should I primarily be blown away that it exists at all? Am I supposed to compare it to conventional horses? To a rhinoceros? Does its pre-existing mythology impact its actual value, or must it be examined inside a cultural vacuum, as if this creature is no more (or less) special than the remainder of the animal kingdom? I've been thinking about this record for 15 years; during that span, I've thought about this record more than I've thought about China, and maybe as much as I've thought about the principles of democracy. This is a little like when that grizzly bear finally ate Timothy Treadwell: Intellectually, he always knew it was coming. He had to. His very existence was built around that conclusion. But you still can't psychologically prepare for the bear who eats you alive, particularly if the bear wears cornrows.
Here are the simple things about Chinese Democracy: Three of the songs are astonishing. Four or five others are very good. The vocals are brilliantly recorded, and the guitar playing is (generally) more interesting than the guitar playing on the Use Your Illusion albums. Axl Rose made some curious (and absolutely unnecessary) decisions throughout the assembly of this project, but that works to his advantage as often as it detracts from the larger experience. So:Chinese Democracy is good. Under any halfway normal circumstance, I would give it an A.
But nothing about these circumstances is normal.
For one thing, Chinese Democracy is (pretty much) the last Old Media album we'll ever contemplate in this context—it's the last album that will be marketed as a collection of autonomous-but-connected songs, the last album that will be absorbed as a static manifestation of who the band supposedly is, and the last album that will matter more as a physical object than as an Internet sound file. This is the end of that. But the more meaningful reason Chinese Democracyis abnormal is because of a) the motives of its maker, and b) how those motives embargoed what the definitive product eventually became. The explanation as to why Chinese Democracy took so long to complete is not simply because Axl Rose is an insecure perfectionist; it's because Axl Rose self-identifies as a serious, unnatural artist. He can't stop himself from anticipating every possible reaction and interpretation of his work. I suspect he cares less about the degree to which people like his music, and more about how it is taken, regardless of the listener's ultimate judgment. This is why he was so paralyzed by the construction of Chinese Democracy—he can't write or record anything without obsessing over how it will be received, both by a) the people who think he's an unadulterated genius, and b) the people who think he's little more than a richer, red-haired Stephen Pearcy. All of those disparate opinions have identical value to him. So I will take Chinese Democracy as seriously as Axl Rose would hope, and that makes it significantly less simple. At this juncture in history, rocking is not enough.
The weirdest (yet more predictable) aspect of Chinese Democracy is the way 60 percent of the lyrics seem to actively comment on the process of making the album itself. The rest of the vocal material tends to suggest some kind of abstract regret over an undefined romantic relationship punctuated by betrayal, but that might just be the way all hard-rock songs seem when the singer plays a lot of piano and only uses pronouns. The craziest track, "Sorry," resembles spooky Pink Floyd and is probably directed toward former GNR drummer Steven Adler, although I suppose it might be about Slash or Stephanie Seymour or David Geffen. It could even be about Jon Pareles, for all I fucking know—Axl's enemy list is pretty Nixonian at this point. The most uplifting songs are "Street Of Dreams" (a leaked song previously titled "The Blues") and the exceptionally satisfying "Catcher In The Rye" (a softer, more sophisticated re-working of "Yesterdays" that occupies a conceptual self-awareness in the vein of Elton John or mid-period Queen). The fragile ballad "This I Love" is sad, melodramatic, and pleasurably traditional. There are many moments where it's impossible to tell who Axl is talking to, so it feels like he's talking to himself (and inevitably about himself). There's not much cogent storytelling, but it's linear and compelling. The best description of the overall literary quality of the lyrics would probably be "effectively narcissistic."
As for the music—well, that's actually much better than anticipated. It doesn't sound dated or faux-industrial, and the guitar shredding that made the final version (which I'm assuming is still predominantly Buckethead) is alien and perverse. A song like "Shackler's Revenge" is initially average, until you get to the solo—then it becomes the sonic equivalent of a Russian robot wrestling a reticulating python. Whenever people lament the dissolution of the original Guns N' Roses, the person they always focus on is Slash, and that makes sense. (His unrushed blues metal was the group's musical vortex.) But it's actually better that Slash is not on this album. What's cool about Chinese Democracy is that it truly does sound like a new enterprise, and I can't imagine that being the case if Slash were dictating the sonic feel of every riff. The GNR members Rose misses more are Izzy Stradlin (who effortlessly wrote or co-wrote many of the band's most memorable tunes) and Duff McKagan, the underappreciated bassist who made Appetite For Destructionso devastating. Because McKagan worked in numerous Seattle-based bands before joining Guns N' Roses, he became the de facto arranger for many of those pre-Appetitetracks, and his philosophy was always to take the path of least resistance. He pushed the songs in whatever direction felt most organic. But Rose is the complete opposite. He takes the path of most resistance. Sometimes it seems like Axl believes every single Guns N' Roses song needs to employ every single thing that Guns N' Roses has the capacity to do—there needs to be a soft part, a hard part, a falsetto stretch, some piano plinking, some R&B bullshit, a little Judas Priest, subhuman sound effects, a few Robert Plant yowls, dolphin squeaks, wind, overt sentimentality, and a caustic modernization of the blues. When he's able to temporarily balance those qualities (which happens on the title track and on "I.R.S.," the album's two strongest rock cuts), it's sprawling and entertaining and profoundly impressive. The soaring vocals crush everything. But sometimes Chinese Democracy suffers from the same inescapable problem that paralyzed proto-epics like "Estranged" and "November Rain": It's as if Axl is desperately trying to get some unmakeable dream song from inside his skull onto the CD, and the result is an overstuffed maelstrom that makes all the punk dolts scoff. His ambition is noble, yet wildly unrealistic. It's like if Jeff Lynne tried to make Out Of The Blue sound more likeFun House, except with jazz drumming and a girl singer from Motown.
Throughout Chinese Democracy, the most compelling question is never, "What was Axl doing here?" but "What did Axl think he was doing here?" The tune "If The World" sounds like it should be the theme to a Roger Moore-era James Bond movie, all the way down to the title. On "Scraped," there's a vocal bridge that sounds strikingly similar to a vocal bridge from the 1990 Extreme song "Get The Funk Out." On the aforementioned "Sorry," Rose suddenly sings an otherwise innocuous line ("But I don't want to do it") in some bizarre, quasi-Transylvanian accent, and I cannot begin to speculate as to why. I mean, one has to assume Axl thought about all of these individual choices a minimum of a thousand times over the past 15 years. Somewhere in Los Angles, there's gotta be 400 hours of DAT tape with nothing on it exceptmultiple versions of the "Sorry" vocal. So why is this the one we finally hear? What finally made him decide, "You know, I've weighed all my options and all their potential consequences, and I'm going with the Mexican vampire accent. This is the vision I will embrace. But only on that one line! The rest of it will just be sung like a non-dead human." Often, I don't even care if his choices work or if they fail. I just want to know what Rose hoped they would do.
On "Madagascar," he samples MLK (possible restitution for "One In A Million"?) and (for the second time in his career) the movie Cool Hand Luke. Considering that the only people who will care about Rose's preoccupation with Cool Hand Luke are those already obsessed with his iconography, the doomed messianic message of that film must deeply (and predictably) resonate with his very being. But how does that contribute to "Madagascar," a meteorological metaphor about all those unnamed people who wanted to stop him from makingChinese Democracy in the insane manner he saw fit? Sometimes listening to this album feels like watching the final five minutes of the Sopranos finale. There's no acceptable answer to these types of hypotheticals.
Still, I find myself impressed by how close Chinese Democracy comes to fulfilling the absurdly impossible expectation it self-generated, and I not-so-secretly wish this had actually been a triple album. I've maintained a decent living by making easy jokes about Axl Rose for the past 10 years, but what's the final truth? The final truth is this: He makes the best songs. They sound the way I want songs to sound. A few of them seem idiotic at the beginning, but I love the way they end. Axl Rose put so much time and effort into proving that he was super-talented that the rest of humanity forgot he always had been. And that will hurt him. This record may tank commercially. Some people will slaughter Chinese Democracy, and for all the reasons you expect. But he did a good thing here.
Grade: A-
RollingStone reviews Chinese Democracy (4 stars)
Chinese Democracy
Let's get right to it: The first Guns n' Roses album of new, original songs since the first Bush administration is a great, audacious, unhinged and uncompromising hard-rock record. In other words, it sounds a lot like the Guns n' Roses you know. At times, it's the clenched-fist five that made 1987's perfect storm, Appetite for Destruction; more often, it's the one sprawled across the maxed-out CDs of 1991's Use Your Illusion I and II, but here compressed into a convulsive single disc of supershred guitars, orchestral fanfares, hip-hop electronics, metallic tabernacle choirs and Axl Rose's still-virile, rusted-siren singing.
If Rose ever had a moment's doubt or repentance over what Chinese Democracy has cost him in time (13 years), money (14 studios are listed in the credits) and body count — including the exit of every other founding member of the band — he left no room for it in these 14 songs. "I bet you think I'm doin' this all for my health," Rose cracks through the saturation-bombing guitars in "I.R.S.," one of several glancing references on the album to what he knows a lot of people think of him: that Rose, now 46, has spent the last third of his life running off the rails, in half-light. But when he snaps, "All things are possible/I am unstoppable," in the thumper "Scraped," that's not loony hubris — just a good old rock & roll "fuck you," the kind that made him and the old band hot and famous in the first place.
Something else Rose broadcasts over and over onChinese Democracy: Restraint is for suckers. There is plenty of familiar guitar firepower — the stabbing-dagger lick that opens the first track, "Chinese Democracy," the sand-devil fuzz in "Riad N' the Bedouins" and the looping squeals over the grand anguish of "Street of Dreams." But what Slash and Izzy Stradlin used to do with two guitars now takes a wall of 'em. On some tracks, Rose has up to five guys — Robin Finck, Buckethead, Paul Tobias, Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal and Richard Fortus — riffing and soloing in broad, saw-toothed blurs. And that's no drag. I still think the wild, superstuffed "Oh My God" — the early Chinese Democracy track wasted on the 1999 End of Dayssoundtrack — beats everything on Guns n' Roses' 1993 covers album, The Spaghetti Incident?
Most of these songs also go through multiple U-turns in personality, as if Rose kept trying new approaches to a hook or a bridge and then decided, "What the hell, they're all cool." "Better" starts with what sounds like hip-hop voicemail — severely pinched guitar, drum machine and a near-falsetto Rose ("No one ever told me when/I was alone/They just thought I'd know better") — before blowing up into vintage Sunset Strip wallop. "If the World" has Buckethead plucking acoustic Spanish guitar over a blaxploitation-film groove, while Rose shows that he still holds a long-breath vowel — part torture victim, part screaming jet — like no other rock singer.
And there is so much going on in "There Was a Time" — strings and Mellotron, a full-strength choir and Rose's overdubbed sour-growl harmonies, wah-wah guitar and a false ending (more choir) — that it's easy to believe Rose spent most of the past decade on that arrangement alone. But it is never a mess, more like a loud mass of bad memories and hard lessons. In the first lines, Rose goes back to a beginning much like his own — "Broken glass and cigarettes/ Writin' on the wall/It was a bargain for the summer/An' I thought I had it all" — then piles on the wreckage along with the orchestra and guitars. By the end, it's one big melt of missing and kiss-off ("If I could go back in time . . . But I don't want to know it now"). If this is the Guns n' Roses that Rose kept hearing in his head all this time, it is obvious why two guitars, bass and drums were never going to be enough.
It is plain, too, that he thinks this Guns n' Roses is aband, as much as the one that recorded "Welcome to the Jungle," "Sweet Child O' Mine," "Used to Love Her" and "Civil War." The voluminous credits that come withChinese Democracy certainly give detailed credit where it is due. My favorite: "Initial arrangement suggestions: Youth on 'Madagascar." Rose takes the big one — "Lyrics N' Melodies by Axl Rose" — but shares full-song bylines with other players on all but one track. Bassist Tommy Stinson plays on nearly every song, and keyboardist Dizzy Reed, the only survivor from theIllusion lineup, does the Elton John-style piano honors on "Street of Dreams."
But Rose still sings a lot about the power of sheer, solitary will even when he throws himself into a bigger fight, like "Chinese Democracy." In "Madagascar," which Rose has played live for several years now, he samples both Dr. Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech and dialogue from Cool Hand Luke. And at the end of the album, on the bluntly titled "Prostitute," Rose veers from an almost conversational tenor, over a ticking-bomb shuffle, to five-guitar barrage, orchestral lightning and righteous howl: "Ask yourself/Why I would choose/To prostitute myself/To live with fortune and shame." To him, the long march to Chinese Democracy was not about paranoia and control. It was about saying "I won't" when everyone else insisted, "You must." You may debate whether any rock record is worth that extreme self-indulgence. Actually, the most rock & roll thing about Chinese Democracy is he doesn't care if you do.
If The World review by IGN.com
Axl Rose
October 9, 2008 - It may have taken Axl Rose more than a decade (actually 15 years) to deliver a new Guns N' Roses album, but the light at the end of the tunnel is slowly beginning to shine a little brighter.
While Rose has been coy with the media and harsh with anybody who has leaked tracks online, he's been a shrewd man in terms of how he is officially setting up the proposed November 25th release of the long-awaitedChinese Democracy.
First was the high profile placement of "Shackler's Revenge" on Rock Band 2. Now comes the equally high profile placement of the next official track from the album, "If The World."
Tacked on at the end of Ridley Scott's new international thriller Body Of Lies, starring box office icons Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe, the song is the first thing you hear once the end credits begin to roll.
In stark contrast to the abrasive electro shock and generic industrial glitz of "Shackler's", this track flips a complete 180 in the opposite direction.
Keeping in tune with the film's distinct Middle Eastern thematics, Axl and band have laid out a slinky, neo-soul number that is surprisingly good.
Drenched in electronic funk slither with Rose affecting a slightly effeminate vocal croon, the track would actually have made a stellar James Bond theme song.
At the core of the song is a syncopated drum and bass groove that is warm and supple. It's wrapped around a slow burn expanse of guitar and then topped off with Rose's sedated caterwaul cum croon.
As with the sinewy vibe of the music itself, the core lyrical refrain of " If the world would end today/then all the dreams we had would all just drift away, oh/You know there's nothing more to say/if the world would end and our love slipped away..." is a perfect fit to the film's thematics of global peril and dangerous love.
"Having only gotten one listen (and the song is relatively short, to boot), it's hard to really nail the song and how it will fit in with the rest of Chinese Democracy, but first impressions were strong, with the strange floating funk ambiance working surprisingly well for Mr. Rose. If the rest of the album is along these lines GN'R may be back in force, albeit on a uniquely different tact.
The only bummer is that those looking to score a copy of the track will have to settle for going to the movies instead. As of now there are no plans to include it on the official soundtrack"
source: IGN.com
