[Note to readers: Given the history of this album, combined with my own feelings on Guns N’ Roses, Axl and this album, there was no way I could tackle Chinese Democracy as a straight-forward review, hence the column format. Enjoy…]
Guns N’ Roses – Chinese Democracy
Geffen (11/23/08)
Rock
Close to a decade-and-a-half in the making, Guns N’ Roses’ latest effort, Chinese Democracy, finally hit shelves over the weekend. But even before its release, the album had managed to polarize a listening public.
First off, most of the album had been leaked in some capacity over the past handful of years. Demos or live versions of songs had been traded and posted all over the Internet.
People either loved the songs or hated them. Then again, people were either going to accept or dismiss this album either way, what with frontman Axl Rose being the only original, founding member of the band left, holding down the fort with keyboardist Dizzy Reed and a handful (or more?) of other musicians.
I’ve been a huge Guns fan since the mid-’80s. I have all of the other albums, and I was able to separate myself from all the late-’90s drama surrounding the band, right around the time Duff and Slash finally called it a day. I was quite happy to sit and wait to see if any album was ever going to come out, content with the band’s catalogue up to that point.
And I actually saw them in 2002 during the infamously cut-short Chinese Democracy World Tour. Sure, some of those older tracks sounded a little rough with the new band, but the new stuff captured enough of my imagination that I was truly excited for this album. That was more than six years ago. To actually go into a store and hold the disc in my hands… I won’t lie, I took a moment to let it sink in, standing in the middle of that Best Buy.
And just to set the record straight and let you know that this won’t proceed as the ramblings of a defiant or myopic fanboy, I actually think I’m able to separate myself enough from this album and my fan-leanings to look at this in an objective manner. As more and more fans grew tired of the delays and questioned the direction of the band in general, basing opinions on half-finished demos, I quietly waited. However, even I grew tired of the whole situation when Axl offered up a March 2007 release date guarantee only to see the year pass by with little news from the GnR camp. I stopped listening to any GnR material I had as a personal protest, until Chinese Democracy would have a release date. In fact, I didn’t pull those old albums out until the days leading up to Nov. 23.
But enough about me, how does this album match up to the anticipation it created over the years?
Personally, I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. To be sure, Chinese Democracy isn’t a head-banger like Appetite for Destruction. But was that really what fans were expecting? It was clear there was much more to Guns N’ Roses than the L.A. sleaze-rock scene. The second half of the Lies EP (the actual new material) was a set of acoustic tracks. Take a real hard look at just how eclectic the Illusion set really is. Sure, there was the heavier material (from “Right Next Door to Hell” to “You Could Be Mine”), but for every “Locomotive” there was a “You Ain’t the First”; for every “Shotgun Blues” a “So Fine”. And it was clear Axl was leaning more toward creating epic-type compositions. Just take a listen to “Estranged” and “November Rain”, and then imagine getting a glimpse of those tracks back in 1988.
The experimental aspect of the Guns N’ Roses sound was also becoming apparent, especially on tracks like “Coma” and “My World”. Word is Axl had really become taken with bands like Ministry and Nine Inch Nails. Hell, that’s why the world was treated to “Oh My God” in the late-’90s.
There are elements of those industrial leanings on Chinese Democracy, but to be honest, the experimentalism rears its head more in the sampling aspect of the band’s sound, and the inclusion of a drum machine on some of the tracks even though Guns has an actual drummer.
There’s no way a Guns N. Roses with Slash, Duff, et al. could have or would have ever made this album. It’s clear from their recent work in Velvet Revolver that, as musicians, they lean toward straight-ahead rock ‘n’ roll, heavy on the blues. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that; it just wasn’t the direction in which GnR was headed. (I think people seem to forget that sometimes, either taking the band’s catalog as a whole, or having the heavier covers album, The Spaghetti Incident?, being the last mark left by the band, apart from the two singles released in the interim.)
Instead, Chinese Democracy plays out like a compendium of modern-rock, pulling in elements from all corners of the rock/metal genre and really turning everything on its end. The harder material—the title-track, “Riad N’ the Bedouins”, “Better”, “Catcher in the Rye”, “Shackler’s Revenge”—is all heavy on the guitar. The combination of Robin Finck, Buckethead, Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal, Paul Tobias and Richard Fortus might seem like overkill (each song utilizing a trio from the list), but it all flows together well, with no one musician stealing the spotlight. Of course, there are plenty of killer solos to be had, too (particularly nasty ones on the title-track and “I.R.S.”, and a real mind-bender on “Shackler’s Revenge”).
Everything is beautifully over-produced, but in a good way; from the slick, layered guitar attack, to the layers upon layers of vocals, it all just seems to work. In fact, the biggest concern when a band chooses to go in this direction is that it almost comes across as false, in that there’s no way it could be reproduced in a live setting. I saw some of these songs live, and they come across great live.
The album kicks off in raucous fashion, with the aforementioned title-track, “Shackler’s Revenge” and the overly catchy “Better” leading things off. The band slows things down with the ballad-esque “Street of Dreams”, which starts off pretty slow but really blossoms into a nice little rocker (think “Yesterdays” or maybe a compressed version of “Estranged”).
“If The World” is more off-the-wall. It’s slow and deliberate, with a Middle Eastern flavor that juxtaposes a grinding, guitar-driven industrial feel and a combination of drum programming with actual drumming. It sounds like nothing GnR has crafted before, but still has the feel of a Guns N’ Roses track. And the song is followed by another curveball, “There Was a Time”, which almost sounds like an instant Bond theme. The almost seven-minute song swings between piano-driven rock and heavier, guitar-driven hard rock, backed by an orchestra which gives the whole production this air of being epic. Trying almost too hard, I think the band pulled it off OK, but a good minute or so probably could have been chopped without too much being lost.
“Catcher in the Rye” keeps the mellow-rock theme moving along, and it’s right around here that you start wishing for a heavier song to break the momentum, but more on that later. “Scrapped” follows that with a more manic approach (think “The Garden” off Illusion I), while “Riad N’ the Bedouins” starts off with a lot of sampling before exploding into one of the album’s catchiest and most rocking tracks.
Things slow way down with the morose “Sorry”, a dark, sullen song with a driving chorus. The whole song has this air of evil to it, with a fantastic, bluesy guitar solo mid-song. The track also features backing vocals by one Sebastian Bach.
Things pick back up with “I.R.S.”, which is pretty much a straight-forward rock-metal song (in the vein of the title-track, but a little bit catchier).
The band pulls off the epic thing much better with “Madagascar”, which comes across as much more thoughtful and melancholic in far less time. The sample-heavy, reflective rocker sounds like a good follow-up to “Civil War”, complete with a lengthy sound-clip montage mid-track.
With the piano-ballad “This I Love”, Axl manages to craft his most lush and beautiful anthem to date. The piano is haunting, and the backing guitar work adds a nice rock edge to the orchestration. And rather than go out on such an emotionally charged note, the louder piano rocker “Prostitute” shuts down the show (complete with a couple of powerful guitar solos).
In the end, Chinese Democracy is one hell of a journey, with musical peaks and valleys that I doubt anyone was expecting. The guitars sound great, and Axl’s voice sounds fantastic; he truly has been one of rock’s most-missed vocalists.
That said, there are a couple of issues. The orchestration is a little heavy at times. There are moments when the string section pops up for no real reason, and would have probably sounded more “special” if used less. The tracking is also a little off-putting, at least on the first couple of listens. You obviously don’t want a predictable “rocker-ballad-rocker-ballad” scheme, but the middle of the album almost drags for a moment or two. Then again, looking over the track listing, I can’t really see a logistical way to solve that problem, and overall, there’s a nice balance to the album. Lastly (in terms of album issues), the industrial elements of the album are an interesting touch, but the drum machine, much like the orchestra, probably could have been toned down a bit.
Upon first listen, there was so much going on it was just too hard to wrap your mind around everything. Now, multiple spins in, it’s easy to start pointing out the real stand-out tracks—”Shackler’s Revenge”, “Riad N’ the Bedouins”, “Madagascar”, “This I Love”, “Better”—that can stack up to older GnR material. I’m sure more will show up the more I listen to the album.
Given the long delay between albums, I think people somehow developed this perception that Axl Rose was simply locked away in some studio for the better part of a decade, pouring over minuscule details, producing and over-producing song after song, hiring and firing musicians at will. Perhaps there’s some form of truth to that. More likely is that there were many things going on, plenty of extenuating circumstances (from Axl’s personal life to issues with management or studio problems or label problems) that contributed to all of those delays. And the truth is no one will probably ever know the complete story, and at this point it’s all water under the bridge anyway.
This album becomes more impressive with each spin. Maybe it will never live up to the hype, but it doesn’t have to. And if the rumors are true, fans will have new music much faster the next time around (Sebastian Bach once claimed there were three albums near completion). But we don’t need that right now. There’s enough on Chinese Democracy (over 70 minutes of music) to keep us entertained for a good, long while.
