ALBUM: Guns N' Roses - Chinese Democracy

Seventeen Years.

A lot can happen in that time. People are born and people die, civilisations are shook, wars are fought. Meanwhile, Axl Rose twiddles his thumbs in a studio somewhere.

This album is a joke. His joke, in fact, to millions of Guns N’ Roses fans – nay, to all music fans here, there and everywhere. That’s because this record, to be more frank than I’ve ever been in my life (and believe me that’s a lot of frankness), takes the phrase ‘polishing a turd’ to a whole new level.

First off, this isn’t a Guns N’ Roses album. That’s just what the name says. This is through and through an Axl W. Rose solo album, along with his jolly backing band of a thousand interchanging soulless musicians (apart from perhaps Buckethead. He's cool). The opener of this bloated 14-track trail of diarrhoea attempts to mimic Welcome To The Jungle so badly, it sounds like its whiny little brother, immediately in the shadow of its far superior sibling when the very first chords ring out. It tries to sound exciting. It really, really does. But alas; it’s as ineffectual to me as a smote of dust. A thousand miles away. Under the Pacific Ocean.

Shacklers’ Revenge? Awesome title, but not so awesome a song. Decent riff, but it quickly descends in quality when the chorus kicks in, and even more so with the ‘solo’. What the hell is the guitarist trying to do? Make love to Tom Morello’s axe? Better is up next, and… wait a minute. What a great vocal melody! A good verse, and Baby Jesus be blessed, a good chorus! What happened to the continuing theme of awfulness that the album’s so carefully maintained so far? Oh hang on, it’s the middle-eight. Now it’s awful again.

For the next song, Street Of Dreams, Axl’s vocals make me cringe so much my face nearly falls off. Skip.

Now the next two tracks, aren’t actually bad songs at all. Both There Was A Time and Catcher In The Rye have well-balanced chord progressions and changes, and even half-decent stabs at guitar solos. It’s just annoying that they discredit this by putting layer upon layer of sound in a kitchen-sink style of production, ruining anything the songs had going for them. Catcher does have an awesome ‘na na na’ hook, albeit.

The main gripe with 'Chinese Democracy' is the production: if this was recorded in say, six months, it wouldn’t have sounded half-bad, as a few of the songs themselves aren’t terrible as such: they’re simply drowned in a mess. Unfortunately, it’s been recorded over seventeen years and as a result of endless tinkerings, comes out sounding useless. However: compared to other contemporary records, it’s remembered the use of dynamics. Most albums around now are built for the radio and mp3 player earphones, so it’s actually refreshing to hear a bit of intelligence in that area.

But then I remember the sampled drumming. Oh my lord, the sampled drumming. The only song on the whole damn thing it suits is Better, but I’m guessing Axl was thinking ‘you know what’ll make this thing sound real cool? If we turn it into a nu-metal record!’ Yikes. And for the record, this must also be the first album I’ve ever listened to where it actually gets worse with each listen.

Will we have to wait as long for the next one? I hope there won’t be a next one at all. We don’t need another Chinese Hypocrisy.

Overall - 3 / 10

Get it? - Yes, for two reasons: 1 - if you want to experience a little piece of history. 2 - if you're completely deaf.