'Chinese Democracy' actually wins my vote

Here's a review some '80s fans hoped we'd never have to read: It's finally time to examine Chinese Democracy by Guns N' Roses. Though the record isn't officially released until Sunday, Nov. 23, you can listen to the entire album online at the band's MySpace page or on IMEEM.com.

Oh, I really wanted to hate it, but it's not the train wreck everyone expected. Don't count me as a likely purchaser when it hits Best Buy shelves (exclusive deal, natch) this weekend, but I might listen a few more times online in the near future. Here are some first impressions:

THE OVERALL SOUND: Heaven help me, I can't bear to listen to one more overproduced rock album. Ever. You want to know what Axl Rose has been up to for the last 345 years since his last studio album? Probably taking a study-at-home class on using Mac's Garage Band software or something. Tunes like Chinese Democracy (listen) and Shackler's Revenge have zero chance of being replicated live.

EASY ON THE GUITARS!: Where is Slash when he's needed most? Some of the songs here feature finger-work that can only conjure visions of Guitar Hero addicts on heroin. That's a sound better left to the hair-metal plague of bands.

THAT'S 'BETTER': Want a tune that will bring you back to 1989? Try Better. A simple rocker with a bare minimum of production work and guitar work that glides between the verses. It's a time machine back to a much better time for this band.

WOW, SOME PIANO: I actually checked the webpage when Street of Dreams started with a happy if not partly cliched piano intro. Lush orchestration weaves back and forth. Easily one of the most accessible songs on the disc.

OBLIGATORY THROW-AWAYS: Gotta appreciate the long tradition in album-making that requires a band to put a few totally incomprehensible picks on each disc. For this album, it's If The World, which sounds like a James Bond theme song, and There Was A Time, which switches gears a few too many times to gain any momentum. And don't get me started on Scraped and Sorry, two songs that sound like rejects from a bad Broadway musical.

POWER BALLADS LIVE ON: There's something just warmly familiar with Catcher in the Rye. And I find myself really enjoying the lyrics here: "When all is said and done, we're not the only ones who look at life this way. That's what the old folks say. But every time I'd see them, makes me wish I had a gun." Easily my favorite track.

AXL HAS MELLOWED: If you were expecting a collection of head-banging anthems, go back and just re-listen to 1987's Appetite for Destruction. Axl slows it down considerably here, especially with the songs on the bottom half of the disc. Tunes like I.R.S. and Madagascar benefit from the gentle pace. And hey, we can almost make out the lyrics. By the time the surprisingly tender This I Love plays, you're ready for a nap. But don't, because you'll miss a great tune.

BUY OR NO BUY: Let's face it - You're either a GNR fan or you're not. Their brand of shredded vocals and brain-scrambling guitars might seem out of place in 2008, but give them credit for really putting out a disc that will surprise a lot of people. If you're sitting on the fence, this one's worth the coin.

Comments

[don in tulsa]

i didn't think you were blasting steve at all chad. i did listen to punk, new wave and metal but i've always had unusual tastes musically. i agree, the power ballad idea is a good one. you can click on my name or go to www.notmovingpictures.blogspot.com

[CHAD]

i wasnt blasting steve, i love the show. only said it doesnt do much rock stuff. i know it's steve's show and ideas. i'm a loyal listener. every sat, w/o fail i'm downloading the shows. the fact is, after all these years, i've softened on some of the pop stuff i made fun of. i guess, musically i lean more towards sean. you wouldn't have caught me listening to punk, new wave, alternative stuff. i did start to get into more of a variety of stuff. i attribute this to the monkees. when i got into them, more pop stuff started coming into my world. i thought the power ballad idea a few shows ago was a great idea. it's up to steve, of course, but a little variety never hurt anyone. sean and steve are so entertaining they could make it interesting and fun. by the way, whats your blog address?

[don in tulsa]

i'm not judging this on the long wait, lineup changes, etc. the only thing i judge this on is if it's worth spending my money on. for me the answer is an emphatic NO! as mentioned above there is no flow, no continuity. the guitarists are guilty of trying to put too many notes in too small a place. it just doesn't work for me, it doesn't hold my attention and i won't be buying it. does that mean it won't open as # 1? i'm sure it will sell a ton.

i've got to agree with chad on some of his points but i also know spearsy has a bias against so called hair metal. and that's fine, it's your personal choice and your podcast and honestly if you did do a show on dokken, whitesnake, tesla, etc your heart wouldn't be in it and it would show in the final product. while i don't have a podcast i am starting my own blog to talk about amongst other things my kind of music which really is quite varied. it includes the above mentioned groups plus a whole lot more kinds of music. i just need more time to write things down and work on them. doing this means more to me, it's more personal and i can get it out of my system. if someone else reads it (and they haven't so far) then cool, if not well who cares. the point is to do it. and by the way, i am working on a post about stuck in the 80s.

anyway, i like what i get from this blog and podcast. if i want something more metal i'm sure i can find it out there somewhere.

[jeremy]

I think that if Chinese Democracy was afforded a review without all the baggage -- the delays, line-up changes, Axl's personal life -- people would say it was amazing. It really is brilliant. No, it's not Appetite. But nothing IS Appetite except Appetite. I think that each album should be rated on its own merits. Every review mentions the 14, 15, 17, however many years in the making the album has been, the millions spent on production, etc. along with a review of the music. The fact is the new album is head-and-shoulders above anything being played on rock radio now. I was in the car listening to the radio last night and "Better" came on. I don't remember what was playing before or after, but "Better" stood out as simply a far superior song, making everything else look like amateur hour. Whether Slash is plucking out the chords, Buckethead, or Bumblefoot -- the vision has always been Axl's. Most GNR biographers have said the same thing. That vision has changed, taking the music in a different, exciting direction. Steve, I think you're right on with "This I Love." You can detect the influence of Queen there, which reminds me a bit of the opening of "We Are the Champions." I disagree with your take on "This I Love." I think the way the funky beat and cheesy '70s bassline under Spanish guitar and strings works, especially when it opens up to something much greater. I think it'll be the Number One album in the country...easily. It's going to shock the naysayers.

[Bassnote]

I listened to it on MySpace, and I'm not wasting my money on it. It had the same guitar solo in most of the songs, and Axl's shriek got boring fast. In fact, I found 90% of it boring. This was not worth a 17 year wait.

[sarcasmisonemoreserviceioffer]

I have to agree with sparky. It just isn't GnR to me with Axl being the only original member. I have no desire at all to buy this cd.

[Bassnote]

Dang it Spearsy! I was going to let this album pass me by, but now I feel compelled to give it a listen.

[sparky]

They also don't have a lead singer. Hmm, maybe they can get Axl.

[CHAD]

well velvet revolver just got dropped by their record label, so they aren't anything at the momnet.

[sparky]

Chad, I actually heard that Velvet Revolver was going to be called Pistols and Posies just to pi$$ Axl off.

[CHAD]

you know how sparky, during the use your illusion tour, axl got the entire band to sign off all the rights of the gnr name to him. this is how disfunctional they were, not to mention, whacked out of their minds on drugs. he threated to quit before a big show unless they signed over the rights. axl knew what he was doing all along. other than the songwriting, i assume he gets all royalties attached to the name guns n roses. this includes any merchandising, product placement, or whatever. i think he planned to cut them out from the get go and call the band his own.

[sparky]

I want to know how anybody can call this a GnR album. That would be like Robert Plant making an album and calling it Led Zepplin or David Lee Roth making one and calling it Van Halen. It's the lead singer with a whole new cast of characters.

[CHAD]

the gnr is ok, it gets long though. all the songs kinda blend into one another. didnt' like black ice, wow. i'll be the first to admit that it isn't their best effort, but it's a very catchy record. i think you might be equating the fact that it's been eight years between records, with what you thought it would be. i've heard comments like, i've waited eight years for this, but did you really expect them to reinvent the wheel. every ac/dc record has a familar sound. they were never a groundbreaking band, just a very good rock band. i really like blace ice, it isn't back in black, but nothing will ever be. the fact, that everyone compares all their records to it is really weird. it was a moment in time, just like every record is.

[Spears]

I still have no desire to hear any of "Black Ice" again. I just wasn't entertained by it at all. I know I'm in the minority on that, but I can't help it.

I'd rather hear the GNR album again than Black Ice. How's that for unexpected?

[CHAD]

you know i agree with that. the tricky thing is, so many great rock bands got lumped in with all the posers. bands like leppard, tesla, bon jovi, night ranger, and KISS were the real deal. many great bands got branded hair bands, simply because they came out in the 80s. a lot of that is simply laziness on the part of the media. i hold a lot of those bands very close to my heart, so it kinda razzes me when i hear derogitory comments on them. they weren't all the same. if you compare def leppard and warrant, you get two very different bands. but, according to the media, they could be interchanged, and that just gets under my skin. the same could be said for the grunge bands of the 90s. i'm sure there were some great ones, but i wouldn't know. i'm hoping for the day, when rock comes back in a big way. the fact that black ice is the biggest selling rock cd of the year, bodes well for the future.

[Spears]

We all have our own individual tastes. I never liked the hair-metal genre. I like my hard rock without the spandex and hair spray.

[CHAD]

That's a sound better left to the hair-metal plague of bands.

why the dis-taste for so called hair metal(always hated that term)? beleieve it or not, this form of music was the most popular music during our favorite decade. sure, looking back, some of it seems a bit silly, but so does a lot of music trends from the 70s, 60s, 50s etc. is it any surprise that the majority of bands/singers still around from the 80s are from this particular genre. bands like, KISS, def leppard, motley crue, dokken, sammy hagar/van halen, ac/dc, bon jovi, tesla, gnr, night ranger, and whitesnake are still out there releasing new product and touring. say what you will about these types of bands, they could actually play their instruments. i'm sure some of the euro-trash(as sean calls it), are still out there, as well. but, compared to the hard rock genre, it's a very small percentage. plus, you don't see any games out there called rock keyboard. if i can find a fault with the show, it is that ya'll don't cover enough of these bands. sure, there has been the occasional show on ac/dc, reo, or maybe night ranger, but the majority has been ignored. i don't wanna complain, but you get where i'm going. by the way, i listened to the new gnr, it's not so bad, but, it isn't anywhere near the classic stuff

[Neil]

You know where you are Spearsy? You're in the jungle baby, you're going to dieeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!! I have to say, I like what I have heard from this CD. Maybe not worth the long wait, but definitely a pretty good CD. The problems just seems to be Axel was going through several transformations while making this CD, so it doesn't really have a great flow. You can tell he went through a period where he was heavily influenced by Nine Inch Nails and other early nineties bands. So the CD could use more consistency. I also believe it probably went through several incarnations of studio musicians, which doesn't help for a consistent flow.