Here Today... Gone To Hell!

So here it is... http://www.classicrockmagazine.com/page/classicrock?entry=guns_n_roses_chinese_democracy


Guns N’ Roses
Chinese Democracy
Released November 24 (UK)

In 1966, Beach Boy Brian Wilson took part in 17 recording sessions at four different recording studios, using over 90 hours of tape and dozens of session musicians to create a song that was to be known as Good Vibrations. With an eventual cost of $50,000 it was rumoured to be the most expensive record ever made. If the record industry, music critics and Wilson’s teenage fanclub were sceptical, when they heard the finished single it all made sense. The song was aural perfection: a multi-part mini-symphony filled with gorgeous harmony singing, a beautifully mournful middle section, and a chorus that just would not leave your head.

The song became the band’s first million-selling hit. It was, everyone agreed, time well spent.

Has the 15 year gap since the last release from Guns N’ Roses (The Spaghetti Incident?) produced similar results? Has Axl been holed up in the studio demanding nothing less than perfection from his ever-revolving cast of Gunners? Has he made the rock equivalent of Good Vibrations?

Er, no.

But he’s been trying.

That we all know the length of time it’s taken to produce Chinese Democracy is one of the Achilles heels of the project. Such a long gestation has created two things: 1) Impossibly high expectations or 2) Intense scepticism. The finished product is not quite great enough to resist being overwhelmed by either mindset.

In short, those with high expectations will be disappointed – particularly if they have heard the leaked tracks and are eagerly waiting to hear what other tricks Axl has up his sleeve (the three tracks that haven’t been released in any form – Scraped, Sorry and This I Love – are possibly the biggest disappointments on the album).

And those with a sceptical mind will find plenty to seize upon: the album is ‘over-produced’, at times ridiculously overblown and cannot overcome one point: in the 70s, Axl’s heroes (Queen, Zep, Elton John, David Bowie) used to churn out albums better than this on a yearly basis, recording them sometimes in just weeks.

And yet… We loved the leaked tracks we heard last year and those songs are still as good today: epic, ambitious, thrilling rock music with some great lyrics, amazing singing and some of the craziest, sickest guitar playing around.

So here is our quick appraisal of Chinese Democracy: for our full considered review, see our next issue, onsale December 10th, and featuring a free GN’R supplement detailing the making of this extraordinary album.


So there you have it – our first impressions. For a fuller and more considered review, get the mag on December 10th, with free GN’R supplement detailing the extraordinary story behind the making of the album.



I'm quite dissapointed, I was expecting for something different, a better review... It isn't extremely bad, there are some good points in it, but after reading it I have sort of a non positive feeling. What do you think? They say they'll have a fuller and more considered review on the next Classic Rock... we'll see.

Edit: I posted every song review initially, but I thought that maybe some people don't want to read about it.

Pretty crappy review, but I'm looking foward to this;

wot we got 2 rem is that they all have only listin 2 the ablum once!

I fill great albums grow on you so give it time

end of the day it ant going 2 be every1's cuppa!

Classic Rock gave the new Oasis album almost full rating, minus 2.

Same with Metallicas most recent effort.

It really depends on who is reviewing.

Sometimes they do great reviews. Other times ive found myself shouting "WTF is this shit. Thats totally incorrect"

I really don't understand why they do these one listen reviews, there is no way you can understand any album afther one listen.

I reckon they didn't like Sorry and This I Love because they hadn't leaked before so they couldnt get there head around the tracks or understand them like the other tracks that had leaked, also putting down catcher because it hasen't got brain may work on it.... is very annoying, i wounder if they would of liked if they hadn't heard the demo.... if so then you can't really blame axl for that !

 :peace:

I am sure this review will vanish shortly. Not everyone is going to love this album like we do.All we can ask is that they listen. Reviewers usually  don't have time to listen to albums more than once before reviewing them.

IRS is such a ballad, this guy knows his stuff

Disapointing review, at least some of the songs got positive feedback all the same. It will be interesting to see their fuller review, by that time a lot of dust will have settled.

Sounds more like advertisement for their magazine than a review.

So I guess it's ok to review unfinished songs and be "cool" by saying it's the album of the year, but once the actual album is out, you're back to being yourself again...






/jarmo

There's one aspect that will be constantly mentioned in all reviews, overproduction, some songs in the album have too much of everything, and sometimes less is better.

"No one else on the planet is making music like this at the moment"

The Sun


That's why.

People are not used to something like that.





/jarmo

And remember that David Fricke pointed this and said that it wasn't bad, that everything just fit perfectly. So it might depend on how much the reviewer loves or hates Axl or any other personal reasons like envy or a corrupt predisposition.

The good side of it is that the album doesn't follow a formula, I mean, every song has a different taste. It would be easy to do a hard rock album with party anthems all over it.

Doesn't bother me, I'm a Meat Loaf fan.  :hihi: Less isn't more. More is more.

Couple of things:

1) This isn't the actual review. They say they will deliver "a fuller and more considered review" in the magazine. I'm sure for an album with the history of CD, they're going to have a fairly well-written review of it.

2) If it is negative, at least there's not some pointless "it sounds different from the original band" comments.

Most of the songs are actually praised, only Catcher, This I Love, Sorry and If The World seem to be given the thumbs down.

Its hard to tell because this review seems a bit tongue in cheek. They obviously just wanting to get some kind of responce out straight away because their latest edition just came out this week and they wont be able to have their Chinese Democracy issue till mid December, old news by then.

I noticed some blatant contradictions in their review. They said all the leaked songs they had heard before they still loved. Well, they were quite positive about the "If The World" leak and yet somehow they diss it here. Second, the three unheard songs are the weakest according to them, yet they praise "Scraped". They also loved "Catcher In The Rye" in demo form, yet they diss it a little here.

In that sense, the review was disappointing. It seemed to contradict itself.

Ali

What he said of Scraped was  "After one listen, it?s hard to make a judgement.", thats not praise. It sounded like he doesnt rate it at all, but its an odd song that might need a few listens to grasp.

Mabye If The World and Catcher are different to the leaked demos and are just not as good??

Scraped has a ferocious riff with weird vocoder-ish melody at the beginning. Axl alternates between falsetto and his regular voice. Full-on GN?R, it?s little bit reminiscent of ?Jungle

That sounds positive to me.  I highly doubt "If The World" and CITR are that different.  Anyway it doesn't matter.  At the beginning they say love all the leaks they heard before, but then the criticize two of them they allegedly love.  They also call "I.R.S." a ballad.  Somethings off.

Ali

Corny review...


Axl NEEDS to come out an say that he wasnt just working on Chinese Democracy all of these years. I dont care if he doesnt say anything else. But he needs to tell these clowns that yes, its been a long time, but it wasnt all for one album. That will take some heat off the idea that he just was tinkering with CD for 14 yrs.

You beat me to it...

My thoughts exactly. So, the leaks are great  - We loved the leaks - but the new songs in the album are dissapointing. The album doesnt achieve the expectations then because the tracks that didnt leak werent just as good as the ones that did leak??

The review is bad simply because as Ali mentioned, there are contradictions everywhere.

And as somebody else pointed out, the review focus on reminding the reader that a full review will be available on the Dec 10th issue. So yeah, a fair and honest review  ::)


On a side note this is the trend that the non positive reviews will follow. They will all mention how long's taken the band to release the album blah blah or how greatly are Slash and Izzy missed.

I had to call bullshit after that part. It's all based on opinion and preference obviously but my god, IMHO these are 3 of the strongest tracks on the album. Just last nite I had these 3 tracks on repeat for about 90 minutes.

Chinese Democracy, IMHO, is untouched by anything released today or even in the last 5 years or longer. I just can't think of a rock/heavy album that has come out in the last ten years that tops 'Democracy'

while, yes, albums have the ability(and often do) to grow on you, first impressions mean alot just like with anything else, that is why they do one listen reviews.

I really don't know if they are listening to the same song as we are...

I happen to think the production is fantastic. Just seems well thought out.

The review lost all credibility when it called IRS a "ballad."  Of course, if Mick Wall had any hand in the review, you knew there would be some snarky potshots.  I wonder if that douche was involved

Next

How the fuck can someone love the leaks but dislike the final tracks?

mick wall seriously needs to go to hell.  that guy has hurt  axl so much with the things he's written.  theres no way a guy like that should be allowed to write for any newspaper or magazine.

im noticing a few critics tearing apart "This I Love".  So I am 100% confident that this will probably be my favorite song of all time...I can't wait to hear it.. : ok:

Why not?

True - that's the one cut I haven't seen any of the reviews praise yet.

Classic Rock comes off very badly here. I don't mind the negative reviews, but this is like a knife in the back.

First, can you imagine someone reviewing the new Radiohead album saying "The Beatles made 8 albums that were better than this in less time."

Second, maybe Bowie, Elton John, Led Zep, and Queen had better albums, but it partly misses the point because none of them could have made this album, not in a year. Maybe Bowie who was such a style shifter, managed something almost similar over the course of the 70s. But never on one album. And if they are better in less time then so what? On the Road was written in three weeks and Fin's Wake was written in 17 years and many consider On the Road the much better novel, the much more enjoyable novel, but Fin's Wake is something of much vaster, deeper complexity.

Third, I think some of these reviewers should go back and listen to some of these classic records. People have an exaggerated sense of what those albums are because they grew up with those albums and grew to love them slowly, without expectations. To someone coming to them for the first time with the expectations that they will be great albums it is initially clear that there are lower points on all of those classic albums. It's partly what makes them so good. Again, first time I heard Ziggy I thought, Where's all the good songs? Where are the hits? Sgt. Peppers too. And on and on.

If these reviewers are expecting Chinese Democracy to sound that good on a first listen while holding it up to those expectations then they are foolish.

Meat Loaf rules. I'd love to have seen Guns cover some of his shit from Bat out of Hell, but that ship has sailed I guess. : ok:

Overproduction my ass. That's an easy jab...swing and a miss.

There is too much going on to give a fair review with one listen...it is a lot to take in if you haven't heard the leaks much.

If the reviewers were expecting UYI part 3 or AFD 2 they could be disappointed.

We aren't talking 3 chord punk rock here. This stuff is epic.

couldn't have said it better myself,
chinese democracy is a world of its own.

As someone said earlier in this post, no one else on the planet is making music like this.

That's actually a quote from the review that The Sun gave CD.

axl doesnt care wat people think! who cares about classic rock mag review! the album will see a billion copies anyway ! as axl would say "why dont you just......fuck off!"

Some people need to get some perspective, that wasnt a bad review, there are some quite horrifically brutal and bigoted ones out there.

The editor posted this in the comments thread amongst all the bickering.



"Apology accepted this time, JP - but be warned that if you (or anyone else) writes like that on this site again, you and your IP address will be banned ? not just from this site, but from the new super-dooper one we have coming soon.

So? Am I the only one who thought that the review was basically a positive one?

I look at the words above and I see phrases and words like : "atmospheric", "great album opener","Full on", "A grower", "beautiful bluesy outro", "A classic", "great kiss-offs" (meaning lyrics)"he means it, man","satisfying, exciting modern rock","Brilliant", and er, "half-decent".

And I put those words with the fact that we made it album of the year last year...

And the fact that we've given it so much space on here?

And the fact that we're doing a supplement mag about the making of the album?

And maybe it's just me, maybe I'm not thinking straight, but putting two and two together, I'd hazard a guess that, just maybe, we actually, you know, quite like it?

(On the 'dated' issue. If Good Vibrations came out today I think people would say that it sounded dated, yes. But because it came out at the time, and we've been able to live with it for 40 years, it makes perfect sense.

A new record can sound dated if it uses sounds, production techniques etc, that were fashionable and everywhere for a short period of time but rarely used these days.

You could argue that some of those sounds become just another part of the vocabulary of rock music - but equally, like an over-compressed 80s drum sound, they can just sound wrong.

Either way, it's perfectly legitimate to talk about and feel that way about a 'new' record - especially one that's so famously been 14/15 years in the making.)


Posted by Scott Rowley, Editor In Chief (127.0.0.1) on November 17, 2008 at 05:24 PM GMT
Website: http://www.classicrockmagazine.com # "

No word on how many stars it got?

No, that will be when the magazine is released in December.