Here Today... Gone To Hell!

Edit: Please post Greatest Hits album reviews from other sites, newspapers etc. in this thread.

The general discusssions are in the thread (http://www.heretodaygonetohell.com/board/index.php?board=2;action=display;threadid=10299).




HMV.co.uk GH Review


The hair metal behemoths have had their legend sullied by constant line-up changes (Buckethead, I ask you!), accusations of homophobia and a perpetually delayed new album (Chinese Democracy). Just the right time then to remind the world what a great band they once were.

This ?Greatest Hits? package includes everything you?ll ever need to hear from the mighty L.A. band. Taking tracks from all their albums (including the much-maligned ?Spaghetti Incident?) this is a pant-wettingly great retrospective. ?Welcome To The Jungle? kicks things off with a riff that could destroy buildings and Axl?s screeching, majestic vocal. Next up is ?Sweet Child O?Mine?, probably the group?s finest song it towers proudly over everything else on show here. Elsewhere we get memorable re-interpretations: ?Knockin? On Heaven?s Door?, ?Live and Let Die?, ?Sympathy For The Devil?; classic ballads like ?November Rain? and full on cock-rock bluster ?Paradise City?.

No matter what happens next on the whirlwind Gunners roadshow nothing can detract from the magnitude of the oeuvre so far. ?Greatest Hits? reiterates just why they were once the biggest band in the world. We can only pray that they can regain that kind of form again.

?Guns?n?Roses were, for a brief time, a real rock band, a scary rock band, a great rock band? Stylus



Edit: Made this the Greatest Hits review thread. /jarmo

haha, well at least it wasn't THAT negative. ::)

[quoteThis ?Greatest Hits? package includes everything you?ll ever need to hear from the mighty L.A. band]


what a fucking crock of bullshit

i dont want new kids hearing sympathy for the devil and mostimportantly aint it fun and think thats the best gnr have to offer

what a piece of shit tracklisting

no rocket queen? no nightrain? no estranged?

fuck that!

Agreed. But we knew it was coming.....

WTF? Ain't It Fun is a great song. Slash kick ass in this track! Ok, it's not the best gnr but, near Since I Don't Have You, it's an awesome cover.
At least, if someone buy this shit and want to know more about the band, they will know there's a lot of cool songs to discover..  ;)

Just think of it as a way to bait new fans. The hope is that this GH will influence new buyers to pick up the other albums. Thats what I would figure. And if nothing else it will kind of put the GNR name back out there again.

And has anybody noticed that its like once every couple of years we are reminded of GNR? Like some thing will happen thats kind of big and then nothing but silence.  :nervous:

Try to stay on topic please, this thread is only for GH reviews/adds.
Discussions here http://www.heretodaygonetohell.com/board/index.php?board=2;action=display;threadid=10299 (http://www.heretodaygonetohell.com/board/index.php?board=2;action=display;threadid=10299) please thank you  :)

Well greatest hits cds are hardly ever that great. They're only good enough to get people to buy the full albums, where the discover the real greatest hits. I bet a month or so after casual fans pick up this there will be a rise in sales of "Appetite For Destruction" and people will see how great the band really is.

I was listening to Soundgarden's greatest hits "A-Sides" the other day. It shits all over Gnr's. No bullshit like Don't Cry or Since I Don't Have You and certainly not 5 fuckin cover songs. This album is a VERY poor representation of Gnr.  :-[

From Mac UK:


Well you can hardly blame the record company can you? And if they don't get there finger out you can expect to see a b-sides and rarities compilation and another best of featuring "Estranged".

New generations of children are now at high schools and acquiring their own personal music taste, when they have had a fill of skateboards and Limp Bizkit they will look to history for new inspiration and probably discover the Beatles and the Stones, Dylan and Hendrix.

If they should stumble across Guns 'N' Roses, they too should be blown away by "Sweet Child O Mine" and "November Rain". Old fans must continue that painful wait but the new ones are in for a real treat. 9/10

over at amazon they have the greatest hits listed as out of stock. hopefully this will sell well, but would that make CD come out any faster?

from Kerrang

KKK

The problem is the title greatest hits. Cliched, flabby, redundant and obvious. A compilation album which rests on one assumption that the greatest hits of GNR are the songs that most deserved to be compiled and reappraised. And really they are not.

Well some of them are. The mangled visciousness of Paradise City wrapped in gloriously melody is still five minutes of ubversive brilliance. You Could be Mine is all spit n snarl the sound of a band teetering on the edge of total inssanity. Elsewhere not much. November rain has some nice huitar parts. Sweet Child O mine is just rubbish. But really thats not the poinnt. The point is that the songs that are missing the songs that the title ensures are missing. Coma is the best tune the band ever wrote and it is not here. Its so easy the dirtiest song the band ever wrote isnt here. Neither is 14 years, shotgun blues or Rocket queen. Neither are so many songs that told you what Guns N Roses really were.

Because what they were and what they wont be again was the most exciting, sexual,radiculous,unpleasant,unpreditable, misunderstood, repellent ,misconceived and undenialble band of their type. And you wont really know it from this.

best track : paradise city, you could be mine

pretty much agree with the kerrang review ( well except fot the part which call SCOM rubbish )

fan favourites are missing....rocket queen, it s so easy, one in a million , estranged, coma ....if i remember correctly of the survivor winners from HTGH only WTTJ is on there

It seriously pisses me off how they diss Axl all the time and then bullshit that GNR werent as good as they use to say they were.

 :rant:

I cant stand the media

It should have been titled The Singles Collection because that is what it is. That way, they could have saved a true greatest hits or "The Essential Guns N' Roses" for a later release.  ::)

Well, we all know how Axl feels about Kerrang.  :P

I wonder if they miss Get in the ring?  ;D

NO NIGHTRAIN?  :rant:

Because what they were and what they wont be again was the most exciting, sexual,radiculous,unpleasant,unpreditable, misunderstood, repellent ,misconceived and undenialble band of their type. And you wont really know it from this.
AGREED!

November Rain has SOME NICE GUITAR BITS?
Sweet Child O' Mine is just rubbish?
KERRANG CAN SUCK MY DICK!

Guns N?Roses utgir plate i 2004, men det blir ikke det lenge bebudede studioalbumet "Chinese Democracy".

Publisert 17.02.2004 11:15.
Av J?rn Gjers?e, nrk.no/musikk.

De amerikanske rockerne har ikke gitt ut noen plate siden "The Spaghetti Incident" i 1993, melder NME.


Gj?r en Stones
Siden har vokalist Axl Rose kvittet seg med resten av bandet, men beholdt rettighetene til bandnavnet. Han har jobbet med "Chinese Democracy" i flere ?r n?.

Den platen kommer heller ikke i 2004, derimot kommer en greatest hits-samling fra bandet.

Platen inneholder 14 spor, inkludert Guns N?Roses? versjon av Rolling Stones-klassikeren "Sympathy for the Devil".


---------------------------------------------------------------


its no actual review.. but it says we have 14 tracks incl cover of SFTD...
the "interesting" thing there is they say that chinese democracy isnt coming this year! damn...

Greatest Hits
by Guns N Roses on Geffen
Release date: 15th March 2004 Who really thinks that Guns N? Roses releasing ?Chinese Democracy? would be a good thing? Really?
No, didn?t think so. It?d be like someone unearthing a lost William Burroughs work and finding out that it was a Harry Potter book. Wrong, stupid and bizarre.

But still, something?s gotta keep the flames of the baddest heavy rock band ever ? going. This though? A ham-fisted rummage through the band?s ever-tatty-growing back catalogue? Hmm.

So, no, it?s not all good. Is it a greatest ?greatest hits?? No. It?s a well-proportioned selection of the band?s recorded history (and all the problems that go with that). Ergo, we only get three tracks from ?Appetite For Destruction? where there should be six (pushing on ten), and we get three tracks from ?The Spaghetti Incident? where there should be none. Guns N? Roses are an obvious kinda band, we accept, but please, grant us some sort of intelligence. You can stick your ?Sympathy For The Devil? up your arse.

In mitigation, it?s impossible to call a record that has ?November Rain?, ?Paradise City?, ?You Could Be Mine? and ?Patience? on it bad. But they?re really pushing it. A perfect example why a band falling to pieces from the start should never make a long term commitment to excellence in recording. But why should they give a fuck? They were Guns N? Roses.


From:  drowninsound.com

That may be true, but it doesn't much matter since it isn't on the album.

Geffen should NOT have put out a GH until Axl's masterplan is established with three new albums of material.  They can make a greatest hits package out of those three albums alone.

Yesterday at college I was reading the new copy of the NME and they gave a very good review, giving the album a 9/10. The ad for the album was also on the back page.

3 Tracks from 'The Spaghetti Incident?'............'Ain't It Fun'.......'Since I Don't Have You'.............and.......

 :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: It is on the album  :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Doh!

@#$%Muther

Maybe they have a bonus track of Look at your game girl.,  :rofl:

Is that a real review from Kerrang?  I don't know why i am suprised mind you. I'm sure Kerrang has been taken over by the idiots from the now defunct Melody Maker lol  

Sweet child of mine is rubbish??  The whole world loves that song.  Ok doesn't have to be everyones favourite GN'R song, but calling it rubbish is very silly, lazy journalism.  It's that kind of thing that has put me off buying it for about a year- since i last bought one.

It's meant to be an album of Hits, so songs like Coma would not be on it.  Just like any Greatest hits.  So him moaning about what songs are not on there is also stupid for a proffessional  music journalist. We all know what it should have been but just take it for what it is they are fabulous songs.  

Typed up from Planet Sound, Text, channel 4, UK:

A sorry mess of a band who haven't released an album of new songs since 1991, it's hard to blame Geffen for trying to get some money out of GN'R as Axl's navel-gazing drags on and on.

Still, they,ve made a right mess of the tracklisting. Only three appetite songs - who'd pick their dim Sympathy For The Devil cover over Nightrain? Plus, the gatefold packaging is shoddy.

However, if Axl hears You Could Be Mine or Paradise City and remembers what he was good at, then it's done its job.

@#$%Muther

I know this is off topic but I couldn't resist!!


I always laugh when I hear about Axl's Master Plan.  I'm sure he sat down sometime in the ealry 90's and said, "You know what, I think i'll get rid of all the original band members or piss them off so they leave...but i'll keep Dizzy because, well, no real reason.  Then, I'll dissappear for the better part of the next decade.  Sit on my ass, get fat, get a ton of plastic surgery so everyone makes fun of me while the rest of the world thinks I'm working on a new record.  Then, while recording my masterpiece, I'll go through producers and band members like diapers on a new born.  Then, once  I find the right group of freaks, err, hired-guns, i'll play a hand full of one-off gigs here and there.  Then, I'll make my triumphant return on the VMA's only to be made fun of because I was nervous and so out of shape that I could barely run from one side of the stage to the other without losing my breath.  Then, for my first US tour in a decade, i'll play mostly half-full areas and cause riots on the opening night of the tour and then quit halfway through the tour and cause another riot.  After that, i will retreat to the "Studio" to put the "Finishing Touches" on my new album and all durring that time i'll tell my freaks, err, hired-guns to say the album will be out soon, even though I have barely even started on the thing.  Man, this is a fool-proof plan...there's NO way I could fail with this."

OK, so I exaggerated a bit at the end...but you get the point.  There is NO master plan...or is there?????   :hihi:

LMFAO [rofl]
That's possibly the funniest thing I've read all year...[rofl]

Here's a review from the Sunday Observer by a Ms Kitty Empire.

"Success ruins talent like nothing else. Just look at Axl Rose, bloated with ego and fast living, isolated from his bandmates, and interminably(five years and counting) working on his Chinese Democracy album, thus named because it was never going to happen. Meanwhile, there's the rest of the once-proud gunners, known as Velvet Revolver (a mockery of their former good name).  Anything either camp release will never live up to expectation.  It's often easy to forget why anyone bothers with these addled clowns.  This Greatest hits is something of a reminder.  Harvesting all their biggest hits and some later period flim-flam, it dangles their anthems ( Sweet child of mine, Paradise City) before the listener then charts GNR'S decline into a covers band.  There are no new songs, no unreleased tracks or rarities to sweeten the pill of their spectacular fall from excellence. Anyone who cares about  their record collection should buy Appetite for Destruction instead."



Meeeeowwww lol  She is bitter. Do you think she's a member here ?? lol

The paper also had a big advert for the GH

Wow Ms Kitty is HARSH. :o

 :hihi:I also think that has to be the funniest thing I read all year :rofl: :smoking: : ok: :beer:

From Amazon.co.uk:

If time is the true test, then Guns N' Roses' Greatest Hits confirms that they really were one of the greatest rock & roll bands in the world. While, in retrospect, fellow graduates of the class of 1987 are about as cool as poodle perms and spandex, the LA bad boys still rock like gods. Listening to the sun-drenched chords of "Paradise City" and the ensuing stadium-sized swagger is enough to make wearing leather trousers and bandanas seem like a good idea. Of course, it helped that for them sex, drugs and rock & roll was a way of life, not a fashion statement. As Axl Rose wails "I wanna watch you bleed" on "Welcome to the Jungle", like a chain-smoking lunatic possessed, it's hard not to believe he meant it. Yet equally, it was his surprisingly poetic nature that made genuinely touching love songs of "Patience" and "Sweet Child of Mine".
Though none of their subsequent albums matched the drug-crazed genius of Appetite for Destruction, they did, as the Greatest Hits reminds, have their moments. From the bloated Use Your Illusion I & II came ultimate rock ballads "Don't Cry" and "November Rain", along with the primal rage that was "You Could Be Mine". And while the covers of the The Spaghetti Incident were largely forgettable, the fact that their final single was a seedy sneer through the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil" seems spectacularly fitting. --Dan Gennoe

@#$%Muther

Excellent review - some really great song descriptions  :yes:

(No about the album-)
NOW I'M PISSED!!!!

I live in Poland, and the Greatest Hits relese was earlier here(like in some other countries). I bought it on saturday but I had no time to even listen to the album, and share with opinion either, damm!

Okey. I think, for us, fans the list of the songs has no matter, 'cause we've got all of them. For other listers, it is the graetest hits album, with full spectrum of they carrier, so come on. Oftenly Greatest Hits albums make people to try the regular album.

But, I think the remastering is great. I hear every instrument part in it's own space - no sound flood. It's great. Beside the sound is more clear for me. I think it's well done.

The only funny thing is, the on the left side of the cover there is for example Slash and on the right Saul Hudson.... Why? Weired, man. If today kid will read the credits, he's first thought will be like: Guns N' Roses was just a cover band.

The other thing. The authors of the songs from Apettite, where always like "the hole band, name, after name", or "Guns N' Roses". That's fine. But why, after years, I suddenly find out, the November Rain was written by every each Guns N' Roses member??????????  

Cheers
MoonMax

 :smoking:

I'm guessing they were thinking Sympathy for the Devil was from Spaghetti Incident, but that's just my guess.

You mean on the left side, it has the text "Slash", and on the right, the text says "Saul Hudson"??
That's funny...  Was somebody drunk when they put this thing together?

One thing I noticed about the reviews is that some of them are trying so desperately to bash GNR, but they are forced to admit their talent.  Even a bad tracklisting of GH makes them grudgingly concede just how great they were.  

Makes me laugh.  :peace:

Review from the norwegian newspaper VG

Guns N'Roses: ?Greatest Hits? (Geffen/BMG) (http://www.vg.no/pub/vgart.hbs?artid=219405") (the full article in norwegian)

My translation: (bear with me for any mistakes.. :-[ )

Band over board!

A "Best Of" by Guns N' Roses seems like worth acquiring. Until you put the disc in the CD player and is reminded why everything went so terribly wrong so terribly fast.

?Appetite For Destruction? added an irresistible element of drama to an apathetic pre-grunge rock world in 1987. The first four songs on ?Greatest Hits? does indeed, pretty obviously, show why it was precisely Guns N' Roses - and not just anyone else of their numerous contemporaries in Los Angeles' shocklingy foolish hard rock scene - that took the world by storm in a short period, until Nirvana's ?Nevermind? (1991) put a forcible end to the stupidities a few years later.

But honestly. The remaining ten tracks, mainly derived from the insanely megalomanic ?Use Your Illusion? albums (1991), are pretty much completely awful. For, what happens when confused ?white trash? kids get unrestrained ?artistic? freedom of action and unlimited access to California's finest cocaine? Well: What's released is ?epic? piano ballads with choir of angels and other kitch-trimmings, together with endless creative admissions of failure in shape of bloated, stupid covers of some of rock history's most worn classics.

What burst so loud? Except from Axl Rose's frightful siren voice, I mean?

Rating: 3/6?

MORTEN ST?LE NILSEN (VG?16.03.04 kl. 07:55)

What an idiot, most of the UYI songs were written before AFD came out. Yes, there was some of those thing added, but I'm sick of people thinking that that is what UYI were. The majority of tracks didn't have any choirs, etc/weren't ballads.

@#$%Muther

I agree with you on that subject :yes: :smoking:

From
www.goldendiscs.ie



Review written by Stephen Watts

Guns ?N? Roses Greatest Hits is long overdue but with such a frustrating delay comes even greater anticipation.
It?s often the case that a band will bring out a greatest hits album that simply doesn?t do them justice, Pink Floyd springs to mind but in this instance we are presented with an album that has obviously endured much thought and care before it?s final track selection and track placement.
Making a deliberate statement as to the journey ahead, the album begins with the hard rock anthem, ?Welcome To The Jungle? a track that sparked the beginning of something special way back in 1987.
This fourteen track album rarely falters in it?s presentation of a band that captured the world with their brash attitudes, infectious guitar riffs, haunting ballads and sheer head thumping music. Timeless songs featured include the number one single, ?Sweet Child O? Mine? the epic ?November Rain? the soundtrack to Terminator 2, ?You Could Be Mine? the song that epitomised the wonderful feeling of a live gig, ?Paradise City? and the down right mean cover of ?Live And Let Die?.
Guns ?N? Roses were masters of their craft and this fourteen track C.V. is the perfect example of it. Guns ?N? Roses Greatest Hits collection is released March 12th.
 

http://www.nme.com/reviews/11574.htm

pretty cool review

Yes, nicely done by NME. Thanks for posting.

I'm sure Jarmo will love the comparison to "The Darkness"  :hihi:

You mean that new collaboration between Spinal Tap and Robert Smith from the Cure?

It only said they got some ideas from GN'R......

It could've been worse, for example "The Darkness are the new GN'R".  :nervous:


/jarmo

Here is a pretty nice review with some band info / stories, courtesy of the NME website ::

http://www.nme.com/reviews/11574.htm

***

Guns N' Roses : Greatest Hits
The last thing I loved about Guns N' Roses was their music. On the contrary, I gave their UK debut at the old Marquee a right slagging back in June ''87; said they were silly, dumb throwbacks.

As a consequence, I received a phonecall from the singer, Axl Rose. He said the band were on the way to the airport in a cab and he wondered if I'd be in the office so they could swing right by and FUCKING SORT ME OUT!! Needless to say, I had a pressing engagement elsewhere but I had to admire their balls.

And so it was that, four years later, I found myself crammed into a room the size of a garden shed backstage somewhere in the US of A with all five members of Guns N' Roses, listening to AC/DC's 'Back In Black' just as loud as the human ear will allow.

This was the Gunners' pre-show ritual - to ingest the brutal majesty of the greatest rock album of modern times, then go out and top it. The band were in such disarray at this point that the ritual and the show were the only times the five individuals ever met together. They were rock's greatest soap opera and there were so many reasons to adore them that it's hard to know where to start.

There was Axl who was so insane he travelled with his own shrink and was forever getting arrested for inciting audience riots. He had a voice like gravel, a snake-hipped dance that became the signature image for the fledgling MTV and he wore bandanas and cycling shorts!

There was Slash,in the top hat, his face forever hidden behind a curly curtain of hair. Slash kept snakes for pets, was a junkie and had to carry notes around in his pockets so that, if you found him OD'd, you'd know who to call. He played guitar like Picasso - straight lines, no fucking about.

Then there was Izzy, the intelligent one. Was a junkie. Quit. Travelled to shows in a camper van with his dog and his bicycle like some gypsy prince. And Duff, the peroxide bassist. A total babe magnet, just pure fucked up the whole time. But not as fucked up as Steven, the drummer, who was so fucked up they sacked him. Amazingly, this chaotic rabble had become the biggest band in the world. Then, of course, Kurt Cobain came along and changed the landscape and Axl sacked the band and we're still waiting for that 'Chinese Democracy' album he promised us 11 years ago.

Anyway, now we've got 'Greatest Hits' and, distanced by a decade from all the hoo-ha, it still sounds fucking great. You'll know 'Sweet Child O' Mine' with its serpentine Slash intro and glorious chorus. You should also get into 'Paradise City' and 'Welcome To The Jungle' if you wanna know where The Darkness got the idea of screwing pop choruses into HM verses. And if lighters aloft rock is your bag, say hello to the mighty 'November Rain'.

This shit still sounds hot today. It's packed with pomp, spunk and circumstance, makes blokes want to fight and girls want to dance. What the fuck else is there?

Steve Sutherland

Hey everyone the hits cd is released tomororw in north america so heres the review thread ...ill be abck tomororw with my review of it

Nothing wrong with using the old thread since it's the same album.



/jarmo

k thanks...so this is the review thread for the march 23rd release in north america..see yas tomorrow

Dont think this has been posted yet.

Allmusic.coms review, courtesy of everybodys favorite music critic...

(http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drg200/g247/g24794pa3g8.jpg)

Otherwise known as the album Axl tried to kill, Guns n' Roses' Greatest Hits is essentially a last-ditch effort by Geffen to get some GNR product, any GNR product out on the shelves. And, really, who can blame them? When they originally planned to release the disc in time for Christmas 2003, they had been waiting 12 years for a new album of original material from Guns n' Roses, and despite a flurry of activity in the fall of 2002 ? Axl unveiling his Frankenband at the MTV Video Awards then took them out on a tour that imploded almost immediately ? the label was still waiting for the forever-delayed Chinese Democracy a year later, so they were set to rush it out for holiday sales. While it didn't materialize for that season, it was ready to surface in March 2004, when Rose, supported by his numerous ex-bandmates, filed a lawsuit against Geffen claiming the record was unauthorized, would do damage to their reputation, and distract from Chinese Democracy, which was, of course, no closer to completion than it was a year prior. A week before its scheduled release, a federal judge denied the band's request for an injunction, and the record came out on March 23, 2004. Was it worth a lawsuit? For Geffen, probably, since it's good for them to get new GNR in the stores, but it's also easy to see why the band was irked by Greatest Hits, since it bears all the hallmarks of a slapdash compilation, hastily assembled by the label as a way to buy time between releases. There are no liner notes, the cardboard packaging is flimsy, the remastering isn't notable, and any compilation that contains more songs from The Spaghetti Incident? than G N' R Lies is unbalanced. That said, it does offer the biggest hits ? "Welcome to the Jungle," "Sweet Child o' Mine," "Patience," "Paradise City," "Don't Cry," "You Could Be Mine," "November Rain," "Live and Let Die" ? which may satisfy some fans. Still, there's not only a number of hits and important songs missing ? anywhere from the charting singles "Nightrain" and "Estranged" to the essential album tracks "It's So Easy," "Mr. Brownstone," and "Used to Love Her," among many others ? the preponderance of epics, ballads, and covers (a full five of the record's 14 tracks are covers, including their horrid version of the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil," previously unavailable on any GNR record) gives an inaccurate portrait of the band, effectively neutering its reckless rage. It also could be argued that this is all a question of semantics, since this is the "greatest hits" not the "best of," and all of these tracks were big radio hits and therefore fulfilling the promise of the title. However, Guns n' Roses aren't necessarily a band that's well suited to hits compilations, since their albums capture the raw, messy vitality of their music. Here, they sound tamer than they ever were, even if the song selection does follow the charts closely. But even if you sympathize with the band's argument that this is not an especially flattering picture of the band, it's easier to sympathize with the label since there are undoubtedly some fans that would like a hits comp, no matter how uneven it is, but the label has been stuck with no more than a whisper of a promise of a new GNR record for so long they've been left to manufacture their own. If that angers Axl, maybe he should finish that damn album while a handful of people still care. ? Stephen Thomas Erlewine

My take on the review...

I agree with almost everything Erelwine said, except his comments on "Sympathy For The Devil".  Aside from the lame Casio synthesizer sound effects present in the intro, its a pretty good song.  Great guitar-work by Slash and some great screaming from Axl.  He touched on the most deserved criticisms (the inclusion of 5 covers, the abundance of TSI? songs, lack of radio classics such as "Nightrain," "Mr. Brownstone," and "Used To Love Her," as well as "Estranged") and accepted that these are the hits, and good enough for the average fan.  His assessment on the presentstate of GNR is right-on.  You have to understand why this is being released, and Axl should really "finish that damn album".

I think that review is fine as well.

I haven't always agreed with Mr Erlewine's reviews, but that was pretty damn right on. Very good review.

And Mr. Floyd..... I couldn't agree more.

@#$%Muther

P.S. He has always had some major problem with that version of SFTD. Always will, nevermind.

Funky, because doing a cover of Sympathy is akin to someone doing a cover of Welcome to the Jungle. Some songs you just don't touch because you can never top the original...or even come close. ;D

Yes, I did pick up my GH copy today at Best Buy. I know alot of people here have different opinions on whether to purchase this cd or not. But I did. The songs do sound more crisp and "updated" if I may say so. But I could always be mistaken.

The feeling I got when I saw the cd on the display rack was amazing. Chillbumps to the extreme. I can only imagine the feelings I'll have if Chinese Demoracy is released.  :)

Mine's a Digipak. The re-mastering is quite good.

I give it a 7/10.

I'd give it 8/10 if "Ain't It Fun" was the album version.

I'd give it 9/10 if it had "Estranged" and the album version of "Ain't It Fun".

I'd give it 10/10, if all of the above was met, and it had some unreleased material on it, and was entirely endorsed and re-mastered under Axl's supervision. It wouldn't all fit on one CD, but it doesn't have to. Maybe someday.... until then Chinese Democracy will be here soon!

However subjective, they are my thoughts.

AA.

Furthermore, "Appetite" is spelled correctly in mine. Not sure what kind of CD the rest of you have....

AA.

Yeah great review :peace:

This should get your blood boiling from Pitchfork http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/g/guns-n-roses/greatest-hits.shtml

Stylus Magazine (http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1818)

Thanks to Ramiro



/jarmo

"Needless to say"......?

If there's one thing I can't stand, it is people like this guy.

It's one thing to be a pussy, it's another to be completely out in the open about it and not see anything wrong with acting that way. This guy is one step worse, because he seems to think pussying out from shit you create for yourself is perfectly normal behavior.

Just pathetic....

Not a review but just an observation. Circuit City where I live didn't even have it displayed with the new releases. They had it stocked with the rest of the GnR releases.

Didn't buy it.

Just another GH review, nothing special.

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/life/story/0,4386,242261,00.html

Quote from the article:
"hardly the best-loved or most-acclaimed rock band ever. Critics accused Guns of shooting from the hip by ripping off riffs from every band from Aerosmith to Lynyrd Skynyrd. Fans quickly tired of Axl Rose's posturing."


-F

harsh!  But they did have this to say at the end:

"Like any 'best of's' it only leaves real rock lovers hungering for remastered reissues of the Appetite and Illusion albums - and we sure could use a little Chinese Democracy too."

After I bought mine today, I put it in the car stereo and blasted it. The guy next to me at the red light had his head craned to get a better listen. There's my review.

from the stylus review:

"So now that Interscope have dumped millions of dollars into an album that will never appear by a band that doesn?t exist lead by a frontman who refuses to perform, Geffen finally put together a Greatest Hits package. It is, of course, in the tradition of all half-assed and pointless Greatest Hits, chronological and stupid almost beyond belief".

Take that one to heart.

Truer words have never been spoken.

Here's a review from pitchfork.


Guns N' Roses
Greatest Hits
[Geffen; 2004]
Rating: 3.9
In 1987, Guns N' Roses released two of the best rock anthems ever recorded, marking the end of an era that had totally exhausted itself, consumed in a cloud of CFC's and indistinguishable power ballads. "Welcome to the Jungle" and "Sweet Child O' Mine" substantially updated the arena rock model as defined in the 1970s, using the tighter, radio-ready metal guidelines of AC/DC and Judas Priest. Not that the world is dramatically worse for Cinderella or Faster Pussycat, but Back in Black and British Steel, both released in 1980, should have ended hair metal before it began. Instead, hundreds of bar band bozos lived out their childhood KISS fantasies, contributing only a handful of disposable verse/chorus/verse pep rally mainstays. In retrospect, it seems impossible that such dinosaurs reigned for so long. Anyone who lived through the late-80s won't consider it a coincidence Guns N' Roses' Greatest Hits and the Schindler's List DVD were issued the same week. We must never forget.

Today, pop metal serves as bacchanalia, irony, and imaginary nostalgia. MTV sells the 80s as a kitschy, decadent daydream, dodging their complicity in creating the pop culture divide that made Britny Fox possible. By the time of Guns N' Roses, thanks in large part to the network's conservatism, there was a cultural civil war going on, and those who threw down pop metal's chalice had to dress the part to find each other in the crowd. And I'm not saying our lives were harder-- we didn't walk two miles in the snow to buy Cure records-- but pop culture was stuck in a 1970s frame of mind. Everything had to be so much more obvious to be understood-- including alternative music-- which is why it all looks like a dayglo renaissance faire in retrospect. But prior to the information age, you couldn't chart your own roadmap. You needed big, flashing signs pointing the way.

Think about the signs GN'R fans had to ignore. Forget the bloated, overproduced Aerosmith knockoffs, the bandanas, elfin leggings and abject misogyny: Slash wore a fucking top hat, and humorlessly. That's all you needed to know to figure it out, but millions of sheep the world over couldn't stand up and point the finger at their emperor's ridiculous wardrobe, banging their heads to "Paradise City", the most grandiose self-parody of stadium rock imaginable. After milking its admittedly superb guitar lead for nearly two minutes, a fucking whistle blows to let the herd know it's time to Rock. Not even Peter Pan could save these idiots.

Oh well, whatever. Nevermind.

Unlike the vast majority of their ridiculous fans and even more ridiculous peers, GN'R still matter, despite their hackneyed glam image; they weren't fluff, and though much of their "edge" owed to repellent sexism, self-absorbed drug abuse and unchecked homophobia, their best songs still resonate a decade later. The problem, relative to this collection, is that many of them aren't here.

What Axl Rose and Guns N' Roses stood for, and where they spoke from, is outlined in their album tracks, in the paranoiac "Out Ta Get Me", in "Used to Love Her", and in their most controversial recording, "One in a Million". Because Greatest Hits is limited to officially released singles, none of them appear here. "One in a Million" put GN'R in the parental advisory spotlight, and sparked major national debates on free speech: Millions of teenage fans, drawn to GN'R Lies by its smash single-- the topically harmless and quite beautiful ballad "Patience"-- were exposed to the lyrics, "Police and niggers/ Get out of my way," and, "Immigrants and faggots/ They make no sense to me." The ridiculous red herring offered on the album's cover was laughed at, and after an educational ass-kicking by the press, Rose sheepishly apologized, first claiming it was written as a "comedy," then insisting he was singing "in character." Nobody bought Axl's shallow excuses, and an older, wiser Rose finally conceded the track should be deleted from future pressings. It's still there.

Once GN'R made it, Axl didn't have much to complain about, and found himself in the unenviable position of having to actually write songs. The last gasp of 1970s album rock excess, 1991's Use Your Illusion was an artistic disaster, full of six and seven-minute "epics," mostly identical in construction, and stocked with ham-fisted, explicitly staged guitar heroics. Apart from "Get in the Ring", the most embarrassing admission of one man's insecurity in rock history, the harder tracks never mustered convincing anger, merely confusion, and the set's ballads are almost adorable in their childish imitation of Elton John and Freddie Mercury.

Yet "November Rain" comes closer to "Stairway to Heaven" than anything recorded in almost thirty years of slavish imitation. Perhaps the best and certainly the most popular breakup anthem since the glory days of arena rock, "November Rain" is Axl Rose's legacy, a legitimate, significant artistic accomplishment from, in his own words, "a small town white boy just tryin' to make ends meet."

So yes, there are hits here, and they are certainly Guns N' Roses' most popular and potent. The major issue with this set-- and in all likelihood the reason the band, at Axl's urging, tried to block its release-- is that, of the 14 cuts on Greatest Hits, five are making other people money, and two of those can hardly be called hits. An overproduced, meandering version of the Skyliners' doo-wop classic "Since I Don't Have You" charted on name only, and nothing so blatantly revealed the falsity of its deplorable parent covers record The Spaghetti Incident? like the theatrical, retarded rendition of Rocket from the Tombs'/Dead Boys' "Ain't It Fun", featuring Hanoi Rocks frontman Michael Monroe on backing vocals.

Monroe, perhaps the most interesting character associated with hair metal, lived with the Dead Boys' Stiv Bators in the early 80s, and along with Slash, doubtless introduced Axl-- never known for his musical acumen-- to this, if not all of the punk material they butchered. Recorded during the spiraling Use Your Illusion sessions, The Spaghetti Incident? is undeniable evidence that even the band knew they were out of gas. Rose later said, "We wanted to call the record Pension Fund, because we're kind of helping some of these guys pay the rent." While Axl had a point insofar as you can't live on credibility, the opposite is also true: It's not for sale.

That much is clear in Guns N' Roses' idiotic rendition of the Dylan standard, "Knockin' on Heaven's Door", featuring a gospel choir (who would've thought) and a bizarre attempt at philosophy via an answering machine message during its clap-along breakdown. "Live and Let Die", on the other hand, ranks among the very best covers on record, and goes a long way to buttress this insubstantial compilation's appalling last act.

Greatest Hits is strictly chronological, to a fault. Nothing could serve to distort Guns N' Roses' importance so much as their last single, a calamitous run through "Sympathy for the Devil", unquestionably the low point of the GN'R catalog (which is really saying something if you've heard their versions of The Damned's "New Rose" or Misfits' "Attitude"). What makes "Sympathy" (from the Interview with a Vampire soundtrack) all the more embarrassing is the fact that Guns N' Roses' alt-rock doppelganger, Jane's Addiction, made their name on a drugged-out cover of it on their heavily polished "live" debut, released just two months after Appetite for Destruction. (Another fun fact: Use Your Illusion came out the same month as Nevermind).

Guns N' Roses earned a place in rock history as the hair metal band good enough to excuse their indulgent stupidity, and exposed the effeminate commerciality that had neutered rock music, extracting the dying medium's last breath. All of that was accomplished with Appetite for Destruction, the biggest-selling debut of the 1980s, to this day a venerable slab of obnoxious rock and roll. Aiming to promote their interests with this limp catalog sampler, Geffen have shamelessly betrayed the band's legacy and diluted their best material, associating it with some of Guns N' Roses' biggest flops, both in commercial ("Civil War", "Yesterdays") and artistic terms. Ammunition for their myriad enemies, Greatest Hits reminds us that, for the brilliance of their debut album, Guns N' Roses recorded nearly as many covers as originals, and in the wake of their success, faltered mightily.

-Chris Ott, March 24th, 2004
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/g/guns-n-roses/greatest-hits.shtml

The album's not that bad

13 week in finland n.4!!! up...

BR,

Pekka

i was outraged when i first read this but then i realized the dude who wrote this knows WAY too much about a band he hates, he must have the worst life ever.

Here is another review I recently came across on the internet ::

Definitive Guns N' Roses

While waiting for Chinese Democracy, Geffen Records has given us a taste of the LA band's old hits

By Paul Zach

EVERY time someone predicts the death of rock 'n' roll, someone else comes along to prove that rock 'n' roll will never die.

After Led Zeppelin demonstrated how the music could soar in the early 1970s, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty saved it from plummeting down the middle of the road to extinction.
 
Then, as the 80s turned into the 90s - and just before Nirvana and Pearl Jam sparked the rock renaissance of the last decade - a nasty, noisy band from Los Angeles filled the gap, however briefly.

Guns N' Roses, or GN'R in shorthand, was - let's leave it in the past tense despite the recent reunion attempts - hardly the best-loved or most-acclaimed rock band ever.

Critics accused Guns of shooting from the hip by ripping off riffs from every band from Aerosmith to Lynyrd Skynyrd. Fans quickly tired of Axl Rose's posturing.

But on a good night, when Rose slithered on stage and wrapped his shrill wail around the microphone, and Izzy Stradlin and Slash exchanged sizzling guitar fire, the band defined rock music.

The sounds they created were at once as ugly as a crown of thorns and as gorgeous as a rose.

With grunge waiting in the wings, GN'R delivered only three full-fledged albums and a few odds and ends before, like many great rockers that came before, imploding.

The attempts at reuniting keep fizzling.

A long-promised new album called Chinese Democracy is threatening to join the Beach Boys' Smile in the ranks of rock 'n' oblivion, even as Universal's Interscope has dumped millions into its production.

In the meantime, Universal's Geffen Records apparently is trying to recoup some of that cash by releasing the band's first Greatest Hits collection.

The album pulls together 14 tracks from GN'R's Appetite For Destruction - the 1987 album that took until 1988 to become an instant classic - and Use Your Illusion II and I, its second and third best albums in that order.

Also included is a sprinkling of music from GN'R Lies and The Spaghetti Incident covers album. Finally, there's the Guns' reworking of the Rolling Stones' Sympathy For The Devil for the Interview With A Vampire movie. Sweet Child O' Mine shows off Rose's vocal histrionics at their most irresistible in a song he wrote and sang for his bride, Erin Everly, the daughter of Don Everly of the legendary Every Brothers. The marriage lasted only three weeks.

Another ear-opener and all-time personal favourite is Civil War. It begins with an old woman who sounds like she's speaking lines for a Ken Burns' documentary, and Ennio Morricone-style whistling.

Then it crashes into an anthemic diatribe against wars of all sorts, from the domestic to the political.

The album also underlines GN'R as one of the best cover bands ever, notwithstanding Sympathy which is one of the worst covers ever.

The band's take on Knockin' On Heaven's Door rivals, if not exceeds, Dylan's original.

Live And Let Die is no contest - GN'R brings the kind of tough edge to the song that John Lennon would have brought to Paul McCartney's track if they'd recorded it as the Beatles.

Otherwise, the collection is a bare-bones affair - no rare unreleased tracks, no demos, no surprises, not even liner notes or a decent photo of the band.

Like any 'best of's' it only leaves real rock lovers hungering for remastered reissues of the Appetite and Illusion albums - and we sure could use a little Chinese Democracy too.

Send your comments to stlife@sph.com.sg

Here's a small article leading up to Greatest Hits.  Nothing we haven't heard.

http://www.emedia.com.my/Current_News/MM/Tuesday/Entertainment/20040330104342

-F

There's a GH review in a Finnish rock magazine called Rumba.
They give it 3/5 and mostly criticize song selections...
The forthcoming GNR album is spelled as "Chinese Democrazy"

Greatest Hits: Guns N' Roses

Artist: Guns N' Roses
(Geffen/Universal)

Reviewer: CHUA CHERN TOONG
 
IN today?s anarchic music landscape, hair-metal (or to use an even less flattering term, poodle-rock) has become a pitifully anachronistic, if not virtually extinct, genre.

It wasn?t always like this: back in the late 80s, bands like Bon Jovi, Def Leppard and Poison were living it up and enjoying their glorious halcyon days, basking in the glowing adulation provided by millions of adoring, screaming fans worldwide.

Of course, it all ended dramatically in the early 90s the emergence of the grunge colossus, bringing with it angry, stripped-down acts like Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, and crushing big-haired Jon Bon Jovi and his ilk to pieces in the process.

Guns N? Roses were one of the marquee acts of the hair-metal phenomenon, even if they were frequently misogynistic, unjustifiably vicious and violent, and racist to boot (not to mention less than prolific: only three proper albums ? one comprised entirely of covers ? released over the course of a good decade and a half).

While vocalist Axl Rose possessed a larger-than-life and self-righteous persona that made him a natural frontman, the band owed a considerable amount of its success to the dextrous guitarist tag team of Izzy Stradlin and Slash (a noteworthy but frequently overrated axeman), and the dense rhythm section of bassist Duff McKagan and drummer Steven Adler.

What really made Guns N? Roses such a resounding commercial success was their instinct for melodic pop hooks embedded within a no-frills, straight-ahead hard-rock framework that made for a relatively chart-friendly formula.

Not surprisingly, Rose?s overbearing egotism became the most obvious cause of the band?s slow-motion disintegration from the early to mid-90s, along with accompanying problems like substance abuse and some nasty infighting.

By the mid-90s, Rose was the sole man standing, and he endeavoured to carry on by announcing his intention to work on a new studio effort (he even proclaimed a title, the paradoxical moniker Chinese Democracy).

However, nearly a full decade has passed since that declaration, and there?s nary a whisper about the progress of the intended endeavour, which has led to speculation that work on the album, if there ever was any in the first place, might be stalled ? or even worse, completely halted.

Greatest Hits, then, is a handy primer to the band?s past glories, and a timely reminder of how accessible hair-metal can get, if you strip away the complementary excess and gloss.

Fourteen highlights are covered here, and even the cover design looks decent enough, using a similar motif as the one for the (in)famous cover for the band?s multi-million-selling debut Appetite for Destruction. But the question remains: have these 14 tracks really withstood the test of time and the ever-changing vagaries of the industry?

Well, for the most part, they have, as evidenced in the compilation?s fitting opener, the blistering, bellicose Welcome to the Jungle, surely one of the most unflinching depictions of the mean streets of Los Angeles (?If you want it you?re gonna bleed but it?s the price you pay?).

The band?s most popular radio single follows next, the soaring, almost power-pop number Sweet Child O? Mine, indelibly highlighted by arguably one of the most recognisable guitar riffs in rock-music history.

The celebratory Paradise City (one of the great mosh-pit anthems of all time) completes the triumvirate of Guns N? Roses? early-phase chart standards.

The band?s large-scale experiments with prog-rock-like epics are also spotlighted here: the bloated, nine-minute break-up diorama November Rain (supposedly inspired by the Pet Shop Boys? My October Symphony, of all things), which could rank as one of the most ambitious power ballads of the early 90s.


The other elaborate setpiece is the overblown, eight-minute anti-war tirade Civil War, a glaring instance where Rose?s overstated musical ambition gets the better of him.

Greatest Hits also takes note of the more ?meditative? side of Guns N? Roses, with a pair of ballads plucked from the band?s often inconsistent catalogue. Patience marks the band?s inaugural all-acoustic number, an easy-going, understated gem that is only let down by Rose?s nasal drone. Meanwhile, Don?t Cry is a straightforward, somewhat leaden refrain that is just redeemed by Slash?s measured guitar arpeggios.


Unfortunately, the retrospective also highlights Guns N? Roses? penchant for murdering rock classics: indeed, one of the more regrettable sides of the band is their propensity to invariably muck up their cover versions.

The reading of Bob Dylan?s Knockin? on Heaven?s Door, complete with a fake-theatrical gospel choir, is horribly awry and exaggerated. Paul McCartney?s James Bond theme Live and Let Die is similarly distended, while the Four Seasons? Since I Don?t Have You suffers from an unfortunate excess of Rose?s trademark rasping.

Greatest Hits ends on a dissatisfactory note with arguably the tackiest interpretation ever of The Rolling Stones? Sympathy for the Devil.


So, while the more patient amongst us are still holding out for the availability of Chinese Democracy (which looks to be a non-proposition, judging by the numerous false starts so far), Greatest Hits will provide the requisite nostalgia trip for those diehards after all these years.

But let?s face the cold, hard truth here: even if the album does get released eventually, it will find it a Herculean task to even register decently in today?s charts, given that any affinity for hair-metal is practically nonexistent.

And so, even as Axl Rose is raging against the dying of the light, more perceptive and less delusional quarters will view Greatest Hits for what it really is: an effective epitaph for a long-departed act.

GnR was not hair metal.? To lump them in with bands like Poison and Def Leppard is just ignorance, their music was not much like those other bands, they were infinitely more talented and versatile

Well, the album was directed to the pop/mainstream crowd. Not to the diehard Guns fans. Geffen would most likely assume if there was a true diehard GNR fan, he/she would buy all the albums anyway.

That's the funniest fucking review of PC I Have ever heard. I bet my life if this guy was at a GnR concery in his heyday, he would be part of that heard waiting for the whistle. I get excited when I hear the whistle and this lieing bastard does too. Don't You?