Chinese Democracy Review Thread

[14 Yrs Of Silence]

The thing that bothers me most, at least at this moment, is when reviewers label CD as "dated".  Had the same material been released in a short time span no one would label it as dated.

[The Catcher]

"Riad N' the Bedouins": On this urgent, heavy power-beat rocker that could have been called "Osama and the Suicide Skyjackers," Axl says he won't live in fear in a terror-filled world. Good song, but its 9/11 references are as subtle as a sledgehammer.

Talk about not doing research before you write the article. That song was perfomed live, not to mention written, before September 11th. God, I wish people would chill with their terror retoric once in a while. Sure, it can pop into mind as a motivation for the lyrics post-9/11, but Jesus Christ, it can mean so many other things too. Who knows, Axl writes deep lyrics, not obvious terror referances. Otherwise ok review, but a little too personally written. I wish people with chill witht the comparisons to other artist. Completely uncalled for, judge the music for what it is. It just shows the reviewer doesn't know what he is talking about and to boast knowledge anyway.

[LittleFly]

"IRS": Another standout, this one flips between mellow introspection and a raging metal storm. It's a relationship song. Axl in love is scary.

BAHAHAHAHAHAH 

Oh man, that made me laugh so hard!!!   

[Sandinista]

Sign up and rate that album HTGTHers!

4 excellent Dave de Sylvia STAFF (179 Reviews) 2008-11-23

Summary: Chinese Democracy is comfortably the most consistent product the band has put out since Appetite For Destruction.

The words ?Chinese Democracy? conjure up all kinds of images, from Tiananmen Square to rioting monks in Tibet, but surely the most enduring image- for music fans anyway- is of be-braided rock n? roll recluse Axl Rose slaving over a hot mixing desk in his pimp hat and trackies (OK, maybe some of those details are specific to me). 14 years since what was left of the band assembled to write the follow-up to 1991?s Use Your Illusion I & II, and a good decade since recordings began in earnest, the big fear was that Axl might have overcooked the eggs- his penchant for big, big arrangements is legendary, after all, and the band line-up has swelled to a generous nine members at times (it currently sits at a lean seven). Yet reality has never been quite so simple, and those in the know have long painted an entirely different picture: Rose as the perpetual procrastinator, for whom the delay had come about not as a result of overwork, but because he would abandon the project for months on end when things didn?t go precisely to plan. Which brings us to the recorded product itself: something doesn?t sit quite well with Chinese Democracy, and it?s definitely not because it?s too perfect.

Chinese Democracy kicks off with its title track and lead single- which, true to form, Rose released to radio without a single edit, leaving intact the minute-plus of ambient sounds and Chinese people chattering that bookends the track. Easily datable to the early (read: industrial) period of the album?s genesis, due to its deliciously serrated guitar riff and viciously distorted vocals, ?Chinese Democracy? is a co-write between Rose and one-time band member Josh Freese. (To put a timeline on this album, drummer Freese and engineer Billy Howerdell met while recording Chinese Democracy. They formed a band, released three platinum records, toured the world twice, sold eight million records and broke up- FOUR YEARS AGO.) Unusually for Axl, or at least for this album, the title track seems to be aimed solely at the Chinese government and its tendency to be overwhelmingly filled with ruthless tyrannical bastards and isn?t, as we?ll see elsewhere, a lofty metaphor for the persecution he?s suffered at the hands of x, y and z.

?Madagascar,? on the other hand, is a lofty metaphor for Rose?s persecution at the hands of x, y and z (those tyrannical bastards!). Another track that?s been in the public domain for a good seven years, since being premiered at Rock In Rio III in 2001, ?Madagascar? is an uncompromising statement of defiance against those that seek to quell Rose?s spirit by painting him as a helpless exile, cut off from the world at large (and Africa). The track begins: ?I won?t be told anymore that I?ve been brought down in this storm / And left so far out from the shore that I can?t find my way back anymore.? It kicks off on a sullen note, with mournful, regal-sounding programmed horns gradually giving way to chilling string sweeps and Axl?s world-weary vocals. Rose sounds almost unrecognisable for the first minute-and-a-half, sounding more like a latter-day Chris Cornell, before unleashing his higher register for the chaotic wordless chorus. The arrangement is dynamic, building with each passing verse, setting a pattern for the album that holds for just about every ballad-type song on the album, though ?Madagascar? stands out for its extended middle section that features numerous film quotes interspersed through key passages from Martin Luther King, Jr.?s ?I Have A Dream? speech. It?s delivered with all the subtlety of a nail bomb, but by God it works.

The two other survivors from those early shows (back when ?soon? was the word!) are ?Street Of Dreams? and ?Riad N? The Bedouins.? ?Street Of Dreams,? introduced all those years ago as ?The Blues,? is probably the token piano ballad of the album but, knowing Axl, it?s never quite so simple. Beginning with a simple piano motif reminiscent of Motley Crue?s epic ?Home Sweet Home,? ?Street Of Dreams? is buoyed by Rose?s singularly most impressive vocal performance and Tommy Stinson?s understated, plunking bassline . The false ending is sublime, and completely unexpected, and really adds to the replay value of the song, while there are echoes of the old band in the way Robin Finck and Buckethead seamlessly trade guitar solos. While Buckethead might grab all of the headlines, the now sadly-departed Finck emerges as the album?s marquee act: his trademark ultra-wide bends on the outro of ?There Was A Time? prove more than a match for Slash?s fire-siren finish on ?November Rain,? while he shows himself a tasteful heavy blues wailer in the Gary Moore mould on the otherwise tepid ballad ?This I Love.?

Cracks do appear, however, every now and then. As a lyricist, Rose has always teetered precariously between rarely insightful and what on earth is he talking about?, and Chinese Democracy has probably more of the latter than the former. Clearly, Axl is still hung up on the broken-down relationships of his past. Slash gets a light roasting on ?Sorry,? a fiercely melodic co-write with Buckethead that marries the best of Big B?s Colma-era material with grandiose, prog-metal guitars, culminating in a show-stopping blues guitar solo reminiscent of Dave Gilmour. That said, it?s hard to see Slash being too shaken by the awkwardly-written chorus chant: ?I?m sorry for you, not sorry for me / You don?t know who in the hell to or not to believe.? Far more incisive is ?I.R.S.,? which appears to be a light-hearted send-up of his former bandmates? predilection for lawsuits (they?ve sued Axl and his management more than once in recent years), while ?There Was A Time? is a deliciously pointed attack at a bed-hopping former girlfriend, ?the one who can?t recall if she was sleeping in another woman?s bed, or the doctor?s or the lawyer?s or the stranger that she?d met?.

?Shackler?s Revenge? made its debut on Rock Band 2 early this year, and it?s easy to see why it was chosen, with its spine-shaking, rotating drill guitar riff and the best of the tippy-tappy guitar stuff recent recruit Ron ?Bumblefoot? Thal has to offer. ?Scraped,? on the other hand, bears a remarkable resemblance to the last official GN?R release, ?Oh My God,? except instead of the searing industrial tones we?re left with gaudy layered vocals and sub-Extreme funk metal. ?This I Love,? which traces its origins all the way back to the Use Your Illusion sessions, is a gothic piano ballad that could conceivably have been ?the song? from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, while ?Riad N? The Bedouins? calls to mind the original line-up?s Led Zeppelin fetish, reminiscent as it is of the classic ?Immigrant Song.? ?If The World? and ?Prostitute? bear the hallmark of producer Sean Beaven, balancing understated trip-hop beats alongside more conventional classic rock instrumentation; ?If The World? in particular recalls the Axl of the ?80s at his ?mm-ma-mm-ma-mm-ma? ba-stammering best.


Still, it?s hard to avoid the impression that, for all its million years in conception, Chinese Democracy is a rush release, and a worse product as a result. There are at least three audible blips during the course of the album- during ?There Is A Time,? ?Scraped? and ?Riad N? The Bedouins?- that clearly aren?t intentional; in the case of ?There Was A Time,? it saws off the entire end of a line and throws the rest off-time. It?s like when CD-writers were just new on the home PC market, and every second song ripped from a CD would be infected with some sort of blip or imperfection (to this day, I can?t listen to Thin Lizzy without anticipating those involuntary skips)- these imperfections are clearly not intentional, so why are they there? Similarly, the accompanying booklet looks like it was cobbled together during a drunken afternoon sesh: there are dozens (as in more than one dozen) of misprints and copy errors in the lyrics section, and some of the images used are of a bizarrely low resolution. This hardly pertains to the quality of the music, but it?s confirmation that, for all the time and effort that?s gone into Chinese Democracy, the release was always doomed to be a last-minute near-catastrophe.

It?s a shame, it really is, that Chinese Democracy is such a shoddily-packaged product. With ?Scraped? and ?This I Love? the only obvious duds, Chinese Democracy is comfortably the most consistent record the band have put out since Appetite For Destruction, and proof the ginger midget can put out genuinely great rock music without the blonde giant and the black guy.

http://www.sputnikmusic.com/album.php?reviewid=28092

[Ali]

Ginger midget, blonde guy and black guy?   

Condescending and unnecessary comments.

Ali

[thesloth]

braveworld and blabbermouth completly ignore.  Unless it has people screaming death metal crap they hate it. 

Also I do not consider GnR metal but just a great rock band

[duga]

braveworld and blabbermouth completly ignore.  Unless it has people screaming death metal crap they hate it. 

Also I do not consider GnR metal but just a great rock band

GNR have never been metal. GNR is pure "hard rock" to me.

[Grizzly]

There's an excellent review up at allmusic.com that nails it, for me anyways.

http://blog.allmusic.com/2008/11/21/guns-n-roses-chinese-democracy/

[TWT]

A respectful 7/10 from the popular UK teletext mag Planet Sound.

http://www.teletext.co.uk/planetsound/interviews-features/a42068beb73c83db29d0da0a23dcd724/bGuns+N'+RosesChinese+Democracyb.aspx

[[mango]]

It's from Slovenian biggest webportal (covering news, culture, sports, cars, music..) - the album reviews there are well-respected by the people here, so I think it's valuble at this time also   

THE BEST ROCK ALBUM OF THE YEAR. BY FAR!


GUNS N' ROSES - CHINESE DEMOCRACY (2008)
Quick: Axl rocks!



There will be a lot of people claiming that it would be better, if Chinese Democracy would never see the daylight. Mainly a lot of older people, fans that lived their life through this great rock band more then 15 years ago, will claim that "it's not the real thing", just like they've been told in 1987 when Appetite for Destruction was released, that Guns N' Roses were at the time just a "bad copy" of Aerosmith.

If you're following the situation at least a bit, and you aren't prejudice to the new music, different music and more creative approach, then you don't have to argue about "being the real thing". The icon of GNR, singer Axl Rose created a masterpiece record with completely new band, consisting of great musicians. There has been a lot of changes in the new lineup, so at one point it all seemed like a Mexican telenovela with no proper ending. Whatever you may think of the record, though all the rumors and speculations in the press, Chinese Democracy is a living proof that Axl Rose did a lot of thinking and hard work in the last 10 years.

Chinese Democracy has the attitute of raw rock n' roll enegery which was a major point of Appetite For Destruction. It also has a lot of orchestral tidbits, creativness and timeless rocking greatness that was a part of Use Your Illusions records, the band itself added to the final product a lot of new, modern electronic sounds which are not bad at all. Sometimes the new-sounding parts were incorporated in a whole song, sometimes just in small places, but those little details gave the record another step further in quality. There are a lot of this "hidden goodies" on the Chinese Democracy and you won't regret listening to them. Axl has made a tremendous job by only putting together his charismatic vocals and the music made by various musicians - you can hear different sounds effects on synths, acoustic guitars matching the heavy rhytms and the list goes on and on. The melodies are also very well done, at some places almost magicly extravagant. We won't tell you all, you have to listen to it.

The project itself are the guitarists on the record. Many of you won't agree, but the fact is, that they have more then decently replaced the work of Slash and company. Now former member of GNR, Buckethead (born as Brian Patrick Carrol) was the voice of "new sounding guitars" on the record, his solos are a big part of Chinese Democracy. The current duo of guitarists is also incredible. Robin Finck (now on tour with Nine Inch Nails) plays surprisingly good and continues with its own charismatic chord chops and solos, while Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal is a true shred-maniac and more similar to Bucketheads playing. Therefore the guitar parts of the record consist of wild shreding, awesome solos and great riffs. All together a great package.

Chinese Democracy, generaly speaking, sounds pretty modern and classical timeless at the same time. It's also been done not by any valid standards in todays musical production, which may be the reason of being even better sounding then some new releases. Axl Rose made it sounds different and at the same time the record is a continuing of the previous records, eventhough its recorded differently. It holds on thin line of being "true-rock" (old band's sound) and not sounding "mtv-ish". The songs on the record are done with Axl's perfectionism until the last detail. There has been no album in the last decade, which would recieve such amount of speculations and thoughts, as Chinese Democracy and Axl Rose prooved himself once again.


Chinese Democracy is a classic of rock music and the best rock album of the year.
By far.





apart from mentioning Fortus, PitReed and drummers, i think it's fair enough   

[demo23nz]

braveworld and blabbermouth completly ignore.  Unless it has people screaming death metal crap they hate it. 

Well, blabbermouth is primarily a metal site, and is an offshoot of Roadrunner, who are primarily a metal label, so that's why.
Also, their reviews are not always up on the day of an album's release.

[GeraldFord]

http://www.nme.com/blog/index.php?blog=10&title=guns_n_roses_chinese_democracy_your_verd&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

Guns N' Roses' 'Chinese Democracy' ? Your Verdict?By Luke LewisPosted on 24/11/08 at 10:21:31 am Half the world's population have already heard it at myspace.com/gunsroses. It is the biggest and most important album ever made, having cost ?8 trillion and taken 43 years to complete. Recording sessions involved a cast of thousands, including the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, a choir of mermaids, and Barack Obama on wobble-board.


You get the idea. Beyond the wild hyperbole, though, is 'Chinese Democracy' any good?

Reviews have generally been negative, with a number of critics complaining about the album's production (too overblown) and pacing (too many ballads). You can read NME's verdict by picking up the latest issue of the magazine.Alexis Petridis in The Guardian reckons the album is "as exhausting to listen to as it must have been to make", while Uncut's David Stubbs slams the entire project as "insanity", in particular bemoaning the absence of Slash as a counterweight to Axl Rose's more rococo instincts.

American critics have been kinder, with Rolling Stone's David Fricke praising 'Chinese Democracy' as a "great, audacious, unhinged and uncompromising hard-rock record". Consequently, Rollingstone.com has become a haven for Guns N' Roses supporters, with over 100 user-generated reviews, most of them positive.

More surprisingly, the indie-leaning Spin magazine is onside too, praising the record as an "outrageously overblown pop-metal extravaganza".

Reviews have generally been negative

That is not true NME is full of shit.

[Ali]

The NME is full of shit, I'm afraid.  They seem to think that everyone shares their opinion and that isn't the case.  Maybe they are only looking at the reviews from the UK, which seem to be more negative than the US?  Who knows?  Well, not the NME apparently.

Ali

[sky dog]

http://music.yahoo.com/read/news/61899325

Axl up on the main yahoo page

[sky dog]

http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/music/20081123_Axl_Rose_delivers__after_17_years.html

[GNR_Green]

The NME is full of shit, I'm afraid.  They seem to think that everyone shares their opinion and that isn't the case.  Maybe they are only looking at the reviews from the UK, which seem to be more negative than the US?  Who knows?  Well, not the NME apparently.

Ali

Stopped reading that crap years ago.  In a similar way that Blabbermouth is a metal site, it's a magazine for wank indie music.

Some of the reviews are scarily bad.  The one above says This I Love is a dud - wtf?  The bloke's obviously clueless.  The piano and guitar solo alone make it anything other than a dud.  Then there's the one mentioning 911 in relation to Riad - utter crap.  It's a positive review but I still think it's a crap review.  Plenty of reviews say it's over-produced - again, why?  There's two keyboard players in the band, so it's not as if they can't recreate the music live.  Led Zeppelin are more over-produced imo.  More crap when anyone says it sounds dated - it's anything other than dated.  It's a surprizingly modern sounding album especially considering the average age of the band members.

Rolling Stone's review was the only half-decent effort I've read so far and that's saying something!

[Black Betty]

Dear lord, all these reviews are crazy retarded.

[Black Betty]

There we go. A reviewer who gets it.

[Ali]

Another positive review:

http://music.yahoo.com/read/news/61899325

Ali

[variant]

I really think Universal dropped a bollock with those listening sessions for the early reviews. There is far too much going on in the album to judge it on one or two listens. I mean I thought the album was great from my first couple of listens but it is only now that I'm up to my 7th or 8th listen that I'm really starting to appreciate and love it. It is an incredible album and, like all great pieces of art, requires a little more work than a cursory glance.