The Greatest Hits reviews thread (Post album reviews here)

[matt88]

Yeah great review

[madagas]

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

[jarmo]

Stylus Magazine

Thanks to Ramiro



/jarmo

[justynius]

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.

"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....

[kujo722]

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.

[Funeral]

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

[Doc Emmett Brown]

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."

[Mama Kin]

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.

[providman]

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.

[slashnbuckethead]

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

[matt88]

The album's not that bad

[pekka]

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

BR,

Pekka

[slashnbuckethead]

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.

[Eeebs]

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

[Funeral]

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

[In a coma]

FIRING BLANKS[/b

Move along please there is nothing new here

Guns N Roses Greatest hits
3 ***

IF YOU were being kind you'd say Axl Rose is hardly prolific. If you werent you would say he was downright lazy.In the last ten years only one original Guns N Roses Track(Oh my god featured on the end of days soundtrack) has seen the light of day.And the bad news for fans is that there isn't any new material to be found here. All things considered a hand full of shambolic live dates, a single new track and a few extra inches on the waist hardly amount to a productive decade for the lead singer of a band that once released two full albums on the same day.
We're speaking in singular terms because Axl Roses original bandmates have long since departed, and a reunion lokks less likely than the elusive new album-ex members were even banned from attending the line ups  2001 New years eve concert lest they upset Rose mid-flow. No matter how much this album smacks of Geffen records desperately clawing something back from their increasingly costly asset. It is also a testamnet to what great hits they were.
In the realm of late 80's metal, Guns N Roses were simply in a league of their own. Their raw,dirty, aggresive , mysoginistic and obnoxious, but underneath  all this was an appreciation of the art of songwriting. Debut single Welcome to the Junglewas an adrenalin fueled statement of intent, establishing the killer blend of guitarist Slash's bouncy licks and Roses evil geddy Leevocals that would see a dozen of these 14 tracks sail into the top ten. Such was the majesty of Slash's giftthat half the tracks here are recognisable from a few seconds of the opening riff. From the screaming Rush of you could be mine to Noverber Rain's pretentious piano-stool balladry. Guns N roses simply had rop rock covered. In these Darkness dominated days here's a timely reminder that the worlds best rock music once came courtesy of men in bandanas and top hats. Whether it will be again remains a mystery.

[Norman Bates]

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"

[youngerformofaxl]

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.

[ShotgunBlues1978]

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

[LivinLoud]

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.