Chinese democracy

[GNRMTL]

Chinese democracy Has to be the most underrated album ever.  Since the release of hard school and absurd, I wanted to revisit that era and wow .
There is no denying Madagascar  street of dreams IRS catcher in the rye this I love and There was a time is some pretty awesome work.  

[gunsbetterthanever]

Every song on it. Totally brilliant!

[D-GenerationX]

It's a pretty good but not great album that definitely has its standout moments.

It's also Guns N' Roses in name only.

[Thorned Rose]

It's a pretty good but not great album that definitely has its standout moments.

It's also Guns N' Roses in name only.

I agree in the name only thing. I mean it doesn't really have anything outside of Axl and Dizzy Reed.

Although it is a good album, and imagine if it came out in 2002. The light on it would be so different. It would be this classic I think as it is very good.

But it took the time it took and what we ended up with was a good album. Or very good even. I think a lot of people associate the time it took to release it which was about 10 years in total from the time of recording until release.

And to put fans through that, to take 10 years... expectations were over the moon. And no album by any person or band could exceed that.

We did get a 3.5/5 star album. And it's good. On it's own it's probably as good as the worth 14 tracks on UYI albums. And that's a good thing.

[damnthehaters]

I literally just listened to this album after a long hiatus.  So much good on that album. I know many here prefer Slash and don’t get me wrong, he’s great.  With that said however, the guitars on Chinese Democracy are fantastic….and Bucketheads solo on There Was A Time is f’ing brilliant. Some of the best guitar playing (maybe the best) of any GNR song. Period

[ITARocker]

Said many Times… good album but overproduced, songs are just cut & copy of pieces recorded trough many years, you hold a band name but at the end of the day the product doesn’t sound like it comes a frond a band. It’s a one man studio project. Many songs could have sounded way better.

[GNR4LIFEJD]

It's a pretty good but not great album that definitely has its standout moments.

It's also Guns N' Roses in name only.

My only issue with this is lets say this album had been released with Slash & Duff then people might be saying this is up there with UYI albums classic which i think is unfair to the guys who all contributed too the brilliant album this is. I feel like Robin Finke's contribution too this album is sorely underappreciated.

[NaturalLight]

It's a pretty good but not great album that definitely has its standout moments.

It's also Guns N' Roses in name only.

My only issue with this is lets say this album had been released with Slash & Duff then people might be saying this is up there with UYI albums classic which i think is unfair to the guys who all contributed too the brilliant album this is. I feel like Robin Finke's contribution too this album is sorely underappreciated.

Very valid point

[Appetitefordemocracy]

It's a pretty good but not great album that definitely has its standout moments.

It's also Guns N' Roses in name only.

I agree in the name only thing. I mean it doesn't really have anything outside of Axl and Dizzy Reed.

Although it is a good album, and imagine if it came out in 2002. The light on it would be so different. It would be this classic I think as it is very good.

But it took the time it took and what we ended up with was a good album. Or very good even. I think a lot of people associate the time it took to release it which was about 10 years in total from the time of recording until release.

And to put fans through that, to take 10 years... expectations were over the moon. And no album by any person or band could exceed that.

We did get a 3.5/5 star album. And it's good. On it's own it's probably as good as the worth 14 tracks on UYI albums. And that's a good thing.

We got an album that is on the same level as an UYI mix…but very different: lucky us ❤️

[Thorned Rose]

But forever will the 10 years wait on it to come out be attached.

And the infamous super suprising VMA performance in late 2002... where Axl said... "soon, I don't know if soon is the word..."

Something like that. And man. I thought it would be maybe another year or two.

It was over 6 years from that VMA performance and interview. 6 years. Just insane. But you could tell around 2006 things were rolling for sure finally. With those Hammerstein shows in May of 2006... I could smell the album coming, but even then... it was over 2 years off.

The damn album just took too long. Simple and that will always be attached to it's legacy. Sadly. Like I've said several times over the years here. It should of dropped around 2002 to 2004. Just put out what you had man.

The leaks prove it wasn't a whole lot different and still good stuff.

[Axlspants]

Its a tough one with CD. Personally I think its a great album and listen to most of it at least one or twice a month. Better is on my workout playlist along with CD and TWAT. Because it took so long to release it, it becomes difficult to assess properly, people have it down as this mythical album and we argue about whether it should even have the GnR name on the front. Personally I think its a great album by the collective people who created it. I do think it ended up been way over produced and some songs needs space to breath a bit more. I also think if Better had been the lead single it would have gotten more airplay.

I think with both Absurd and HardSkool, as soon as you add Slash on to it, it sounds like Guns n Roses again. Thats just the truth, Slash's guitar is as much a part of the GnR sound as Axls voice. So when Slash is missing from CD it doesn't sound like GnR anymore, some of it still sounds awesome but just not like GnR.

I wish firstly that what seems like a small agrument didn't rob us all of these guys working together for so long. I also wish Axl would have just done solo records without feeling like he had to add to the GnR legacy on his own, something which clearly burdened him for many years.

Guns n Roses have been my favourite band for over 30 years now and I moving forward I hope they can release even more new music together and be at peace with each other and their legacy.

[Eduardo]

I just wish it had fewer songs. If The World, Scraped, Shackler's Revenge and Riad N' The Bedouins aren't as good as the rest of the songs. If they had taken those out, the album would have 10 songs and it surely would be a classic.

That seems to be the problem with a lot of bands nowadays anyways. They choose to release longer albuns, and this results in good albuns instead of classics.

The new Greta Van Fleet is an example. Had they chose like 8 songs, it would be killer. Instead, we got a mediocre album with some fillers.

In the 70's and 80's a lot of the classic albums we know (Master of Puppets, Rocks, Toys in the Attic, Led Zeppelin IV, etc.) has fewer songs and all of them are absolute classics.

[DeN]

problem is, *your* perfect tracking list is not mine, and mine wouldnt please everybody neither.

for example Shackler's Revenge is one of my favorite track on the album, and one of the most catchy song of the CD. in a manager position, I would have chose it as first single to launch the album.

I agree, there's a problem on the tracking list of this album, but from my perspective it's not a question of "how many tracks", it's a question of the nature of the songs themselves, and how
they work together.

I would probably have kept Chinese Democracy, Shackler's Revenge, Better, There Was a Time, Scraped, Sorry This I Love and Prostitute, and I would have added Hard Skool and another song from the sessions who would have completed these ones.

It's a very good album, but a little wobbly

[bicycle handgrenade]

It’s a one man studio project.

It really isn't though. The final line-up of the "classic era" GNR was Axl, Slash, Duff, Dizzy, Matt and Paul. Half of that line-up went on to write and record Chinese Democracy, with the others replaced along the way. The narrative that Axl went solo simply isn't true. Paul and Dizzy did a lot of the writing.

[DAVE ROCK]

It's a good album but definitely to me it's only a Guns n' Roses album in its name. To me is Axl's solo album
I have three main problems with the album:

- Guitars: in general they sound too industrial-metal

- Drums: the hip-hop/nu-metal beats kinda groove is too repetitive and all over the album. I miss the vibe of rock drummin'. The only more or less rock drummer there was Josh Freese. Neither Brain nor Frank are natural rock drummers in my opinion

- Production: it's way overproduced

I'm glad to see the hard-rock guitar driven sound back with Slash and Duff. Hardskool is the sound of Guns we all fell in love and even a song like Absurd, wich sounds more like the CD album, sounds better and rocker, like a modern Inmigrant Song


Anyway it's a good album with some great work. To me the best ones are: CD; Better; Street of Dreams; There was a time; Catcher; IRS; Prostitute

[D-GenerationX]

Problem is, you will never hear anyone but a GNR diehard praise this as some masterpiece.

Bear with me here.

Take some other band.  One you know of, perhaps like some of their stuff.  At the very least, you know what they are about.

Now, when a new album comes out, factor in :

- the singer is the only one left
- the original replacement band that he recruited to play on it have mostly since been replaced again by the time of release
- the songs sound very little like what you know of the past work of the band
- it took the singer literally 10 years to get this all together

Now, and be honest, if faced with all that, and you are assured by a superfan of that band that it's just genius...what do you think?

Option A : This guy nails it.

Option B : This guy is a superfan and not the least bit objective.  And I have to think he would not give other bands such an incredible benefit of the doubt with all these factors.

I am Option B.  I make no bones about this.  I also think 99% of the planet would be with me on Option B.

I have an incredibly hard time...nah, scratch that.  I have an absolute *impossible time* seeing anyone around here lavishing such praise on a "Metallica" album that was James Hetfield and a bunch of dudes.  Or a "Pearl Jam" album that was Eddie Vedder and a bunch of randos.

I think, at best, you say..."it has its moments, sure, but it's not really Metallica / Pearl Jam, let's be real."

[westcoast_junkie]

- the singer is the only one left
- the original replacement band that he recruited to play on it have mostly since been replaced again by the time of release
- the songs sound very little like what you know of the past work of the band
- it took the singer literally 10 years to get this all together

Well, none of theese factors are objective. I think option B is the least objective one.

My subjective opinion: Chinese Democracy is superb, and in 2010 I considered the line-up real Gn'R. Great band!

[D-GenerationX]

- the singer is the only one left
- the original replacement band that he recruited to play on it have mostly since been replaced again by the time of release
- the songs sound very little like what you know of the past work of the band
- it took the singer literally 10 years to get this all together

Well, none of theese factors are objective. I think option B is the least objective one.

My subjective opinion: Chinese Democracy is superb, and in 2010 I considered the line-up real Gn'R. Great band!

Really?  Let's go down the list.

- Only possible retort is to come back at me with Dizzy Reed.  I'd be as embarrassed hearing that as I'd hope you would be trying to run that up the flagpole.  C'mon, huh?

- By time of release : Buckethead - GONE.  Robin Finck - GONE.  Paul Tobias - GONE.  Josh Freese - GONE.  That's not the majority of the band?  Did you fail fractions as a lad?

- Not a one of these songs would fit on AFD.  Maybe 4 would fit on UYI (Street Of Dreams, Catcher In The Rye, IRS, This I Love).  4 out of 14. 

- Axl started this misadventure in 1998 and the album came out in 2008.  Few things more objective than raw numbers and math.

[C0ma]

I have my criticisms of the album as a whole, but they are just my opinions. In November of 2008 I was happy to get what I got, it was a long time coming.

The album we got in 2008 was what they were able to release based on a variety of circumstances. I would at some point like Axl's version of "Let it Be: Naked" where it is a stripped down version with the bare minimum instrumentation and engineering to get the "essence" of the songs out, but without layered snippets of guitar from every person in the band since 1997 and bloated 1 minute long intro's like the title track. It would be nice if it retained the core of the CD lineup... I wouldn't mind hearing the current lineups take on songs, BUT I really want to hear what Axl wanted out of the 1997-2001 version of the band.

While Slash is working with Myles in the bands down time, get together with Caram, Brain, and anyone who can make this happen and get it out.

[D-GenerationX]

I will admit that when that storage locker of leaks was unearthed, I did find myself digging the rawer version of the songs more than the overproduced ones we got.

Probably no bigger examples than the title track and the (at the time) 'The Blues'.