The big question about Chinese Democracy is will it work for old Guns n' Roses fans. The answer is at various moments it will, other times you will want to puke.
After 15 years, welcome to ‘Chinese Democracy’, a musical roller-coaster ride. The highs on this album are very high. The lows are black holes. As an album, it isn't a patch on 'Appetite' or 'Illusion'.If Chinese Democracy was released as an Axl Rose solo album I’d be singing its praises. That is the biggest issue fans will have to wrestle with. Does it sound like GnR? The answer is sometimes. Guns n’ Roses was a combination of talents. It was about the guitar, the drums, the bass and the vocals. Sorry, Axl without Slash and the boys, this just isn’t GnR.
It is a good album. It is just not a good Guns n' Roses album.
Where Chinese Democracy wins is that it does create a loose link with the GnR past. Axl Rose has one of the most distinctive voices in rock and roll. You can’t take that away from him. Axl Rose still sounds like Axl Rose.
‘Riad N’ The Bedoiun’s comes the closest to the ‘Welcome To The Jungle’ sound. Now THAT was GnR at their best. The Chinese Democracy title track also tries hard to replicate the old GnR sound. ‘I.R.S’ has the angst we grew to love from those early days.
‘There Was A Time’ and ‘Madagascar’ are the big, building moments for the album. ‘Madagascar’ recycles the Cool Hand Luke movie line “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate”. Axl must have got a two-for-one deal on that sound bite.
After that it starts to slide.
‘Scraped’ gets back on track but the letdown again is the band. This is not Guns n’ Roses. It is Axl Rose solo.
Heading towards Pukesville, ‘Street of Dreams’ and ‘Catcher In The Rye’ sound like Axl in Fat Elvis mode. They are both overly produced big ballad numbers better suited for Celine Dion or Michael Bolton to play in Vegas than to grace the Guns n’ Roses name. Frankly, they don’t deserve to be attached to the Gunners name.
‘If The World’ is so far removed from what GnR sounds like I am actually wondering if Axl is trying to predict the future of what an old, fat Trent Reznor might sound like and beat him to the sound. Same with ‘Sorry’. It just doesn’t fit what we want from GnR.
‘This I Love’ is a lovely song. The only thing is, we don’t normally think of the term ‘lovely’ for the Gunners. The solo screams “Slash-lite”. On a positive note, there is now finally a Guns n’ Roses song for the soft-rock stations to play.
The last song, ‘Prostitute’ starts bad and ends average.
You’ve got 6 great or very good songs on this album. I must admit, that’s not bad for an album of 14 songs these days. That should give you an idea of how low the bar has been lowered this decade. We accept mediocrity because “mediocre” has come to mean “above average”.
I suspect Chinese Democracy will have a very short chart life.
Ranking Chinese Democracy tracks out of 5:
Chinese Democracy (5 stars)
Shackler’s Revenge (4 stars)
Better (3 stars)
Street of Dreams (2 stars)
If The World (2 stars)
There Was A Time (4 stars)
Catcher In The Rye (2 stars)
Scraped (3 stars)
Riad N’ The Bedouins (4 stars)
Sorry (2 stars)
IRS (5 stars)
Madagascar (5 stars)
This I Love (2 stars)
Prostitute (3 stars)
