I just wasted the last 71 minutes of my life listening to the Chinese Democracy stream (located here). Masturbatory isn’t the right word, but it’s the first that comes to mind.
When I heard a bootleg of this album three years ago, I got that uneasy, embarrassed because you’re embarrassed for the person feeling that you get when your best friend drinks too much and insists on doing Def Leppard karaoke. Back then, I hoped what I was hearing was a combination of unreleased Use Your Illusion outtakes and someone’s half-assed, bedroom attempt at constructing Nine Inch Nails type tracks using leftover Axl Rose vocals. Sadly, I think I was right, only instead of the obsessive fan boy I had imagined, it was Axl Rose sitting in his bedroom making those lame attempts at being the next Trent Reznor.
Aside from all of the pseudo-pseudo-industrial posing, everything that appeared on the Use Your Illusion albums that took Guns N Roses from potentially being one of the greatest rock acts of all time to being one big joke is present. The over production, the multi-layered/harmonized vocals, the songs that go on and on pointlessly, the unfocused mixing, the bloated arrangements, it’s all there. It’s nearly, though, not quite, enough to make me think I was wrong about thinking Mike Clink was the second worst rock producer next to Bob Rock. It’s clear that Axl Rose is directly responsible for everything bad about the two Use Your Illusion albums as well as this one.
Certainly, the instrumental performances on Chinese Democracy are competent, but what else would you expect from a bunch of hired guns (and, shouldn’t that be the band’s name at this point, Hired Guns)? After all, the musicians are appearing only because of a trade. They traded their competence for the cash, or the visibility, or both. As for the vocal performance, I’m aghast at how often Rose sounds like a small animal being tortured. Seriously, have you ever seen video of animal testing? It’s the same as the audio to those films. It’s worse than Yoko Ono. Sure, Yoko Ono made the same sounds, but she was doing it on purpose. Rose thinks he is actually singing. The most glaring example of this is on Street of Dreams, which only goes to show this as the vanity project that it is. No producer, including Bob Rock, would have allowed that vocal track to see the light of day otherwise. It’s a vocal performance that is all over the place, oscillating between a crushed testicle wail and a monotone so bad as to embarrass Johnny Cash.
Then there’s the stylistic break of If the World. This song is what Michael Jackson would sound like if he really tried to rock. It’s got the same over production and sterility as Jackson’s work and the vocals on this track, while not sounding exactly like Jackson, are too close for my taste. The instrumentation is not bad, even interesting in places, and may have once had potential, but whatever potential there once was has been completely undone by the nauseating King of Pop vocalizations.
A few more quick words on this and then I’m done…
The opening of Scraped is far too close to sounding like a boy band for me to be comfortable with my sexuality while listening to it.
Raid n’ the Bedouins was a much better song when Led Zeppelin recorded it as the Immigrant Song.
The point is there’s so much wrong with this album that it would take me days to list all of the flaws and at this point, I’ve already given it far more of my time than it deserves. In all seriousness, don’t waste your time with this turd. At best, all it will ever be is a joke, a stereotype, a reminder of something that could have been great but never was.
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Alright I personally like Chinese Democracy, but it did take a few listens, but that’s not really my point. My question is if you don’t even like the Use Your Illusion albums then did it ever occur to you that you’re not even actually a fan of GN’R or their musical style at all and you never were?
Maybe they’re (were) a good band right, so maybe you just found one album you happened to like, probably Appetite, because even if you don’t personally care for their style a good band will eventually put out something that you like. But just because they put out that one album doesn’t mean that that is their style in full or they owe you anything else.
Like Bon Jovi. I like maybe three Bon Jovi songs tops. If Bon Jovi released a new album the last thing I would do is bash it on the basis that it doesn’t sound like Bon Jovi is supposed to sound. Who am I to say what they’re supposed to sound like? Even if the album was good you’d never get a good review from me because I’m not going to like it no matter how good it is because it’s friggin Bon Jovi!
If you don’t like the Illusions, which are their best two albums in my opinion, then how would you even know what a Guns N’ Roses album like Chinese Democracy is supposed to sound like or claim that it’s too over produced?
It’s fine if you don’t like overproduced crap, but some of us do. I don’t want every recording to sound like some teenager belted one out in his garage. I want to know they set down in a nice studio with working mixers and tuned guitars and stuff you know, but for those of you that don’t I guess you can always rock out to some Saint Anger. There is something that’s definitely not overproduced. Me personally I prefer Load though and I prefer Youthanasia to Killing is my Business. I just like a good quality recording where I can hear everything clearly and cleanly and if I want a live sound where I can’t tell what the guy is saying I’ll go see a live show. That’s just me though. Sorry you’re not into that.
As for Chinese Democracy perhaps I would have hired some different guns, but I’m not the one making the album and in my opinion it turned out pretty darn good in the end, if you’re actually a fan of that style of music. Maybe you’ll never like it, but you don’t like GN’R anyway so why would you is my point?
As for the band, well really what’s he supposed to do? Regardless of who’s fault it was that the band left, well the band left. They had 15 years to come back. I don’t think they’re coming. Even if they did they’d probably never recreate what they had anyway. Everyone’s gotta move on eventually. Yeah it sucks, but so is life.
To say that I don’t like GNR misses the fact that this isn’t a GNR album. It’s the Axl Rose Experience and should be labeled as such. After all, he’s making all of the decisions; it’s not a band making decisions collectively. But, then an album by The Axl Rose Project isn’t going to sell nearly as many albums as a new GNR album, right? I mean, look at Slash’s Snakepit. Certainly, It’s Five o’Clock Somewhere went platinum, but it didn’t sell nearly as many albums as a new GNR album would have and that was only a few years after The Spaghetti Incident, not the sixteen years it’s been for Chinese Democracy. Axl Rose is simply cashing in on the name, and if you like his solo project, so be it, but don’t claim it’s a new GNR album. It’s not.
Well I didn’t mean to insult. I’m just saying that I disagree that there is no GN’R in Chinese. A non-fan just might not notice. It is mostly a new style, but so was every GN’R album. I don’t want Chinese Democracy to sound like the other albums anyway. I’ve been listening to those for twenty years!
It may be a big deal that he put GN’R on the album. Maybe you’re right about that. However, that’s more of a business thing that I just never cared about. I’ve already heard the “It’s not GN’R!” rant or “It’s not Appetite!” rant for various reasons. I heard it in 88, 91, 93, and again in 99. So, it’s pointless to even have that argument. It hasn’t been “GN’R” for a very long time. Yeah I wish it had Slash, but it don’t.
Is he cashing in on the name? Sure he is. It is Axl after all. What did you expect? He’s not very nice. If I stopped listening to every musician that wasn’t nice then half my collection would have to go. Heck, I would have to go!
However, I personally think it would have been worse for Axl to try to copy what a “Slash” sound would have sounded like. A new band, so he comes up with a new sound. He isn’t pretending that everything was him and that he can do it the same without them like they didn’t mean anything. It’s also showing respect to the new band because he’s not saying hey, you guys have to sound like Slash!