Album review: Guns N' Roses - Chinese Democracy

Well the new album from Guns N' Roses has finally arrived. After many delays and a millions of dollars it's finally here. For those of you that don't know this is officially the most expensive album ever produced. At last count the total production cost was a little over $13 million. For a while it was being called the most expensive album never made.

This is the first album of new material from the band in 17 years. Their last releases were the dual albums of Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II both released in 1991. Then in 1993 they released The Spaghetti Incident but that was all cover songs. Shortly after that the band broke up and most people thought that was the end. But Axl Rose continued to try and carry on the Guns N' Roses name and said that an album of new material would be coming. Officially this album has been in the works since 1994 because at the time Axl and Slash had begun to write and record some new material. Whether or not that material is in this album probably won't be known.

A lot of people were hoping that Axl and Slash could bury the hatchet and get the band back together but Axl is very stubborn and Slash had moved onto other projects. The band continued to tour but eventually all of the founding members except Axl were gone. Well he wasn't one to let things die so he just replaced everyone and kept using the name Guns N' Roses.

They released a version of the Rolling Stones song Sympathy for the Devil to go along with the movie Interview With the Vampire. This was the first sign to people that maybe they would be releasing some new material. Then in 1999 a new song came out called Oh My God. People thought this might go on their new album but it wound up on the soundtrack for the movie End of Days. Then in 2002 they made a surprise appearance at the end of the MTV Video Music awards. They performed older material as well as a new song called Madagascar. This again sparked interest in the album and it wasn't too long after that the name Chinese Democracy was released. But we'd have to wait another 6 years before the album would actually come out.

For those of you that don't know the band was formed from two other bands the LA Guns and Hollywood Rose, hence the name Guns N' Roses. But with Axl the only one left that doesn't really apply anymore. I believe, like other people, that he should have either changed the name of the band or just released it as Axl Rose instead of Guns N' Roses. Hell there's more members of Guns N' Roses in Velvet Revolver now than any other band.

Now one interesting thing is if you look at the credits inside the CD jacket you will see that they are about the longest of any other album. With close to 13 years of production and more studios and musicians than most people can name it's no wonder it looks more like the credits of a movie than a CD.

A funny thing that happened was in 2007 Dr. Pepper said they were going to give a free 20 ounce bottle to everyone in America when the new GNR album was released. Well they made good on their offer and on the day the album was released you could go to their website to get your coupon. Of course due to high demand the website wouldn't load. They added an extra day but it still wouldn't load then either.

So the question remains, is the album any good? Well my answer is, yes. This is one of those albums that could have easily disappointed everybody. Being the most anticipated album of all time gives it a lot to live up to. But this just shows that Axl can still make good music.

Now the album starts off pretty fast. The first two songs, Chinese Democracy and Shackler's Revenge, are pretty heavy and are somewhat reminiscent of the old GNR sound. However in both of those songs Axl's voice has been given the industrial treatment. It's been what I like to call Britneyized. This is where they use a program like Pro Tools to alter the voice to make it sound any way they like. This effect isn't a bad thing but the first time I heard Shackler's Revenge it took me a bit before I remembered it's Guns N' Roses.

What's interesting is there seem to be more slow songs on this album than harder songs. This isn't really a bad thing but when you think of Guns N' Roses usually you think of the harder songs like Welcome To the Jungle. But the slower songs are good and Street of Dreams is a power ballad that reminds you a bit of songs like November Rain. What is unfortunate with the slower songs is the albums starts off with a really fast pace but then it loses momentum and never gets it back.

Listening to it you can obviously tell that Slash is missing from the equation. The guitar work is good but it's lacking his signature style that really made the band sound good. I believe that Slash was the heart of the band and when he left it probably should have just died. Now there is still some insane guitar work, especially on Shackler's Revenge. The guitar work in that song is done by the guitarist known as Buckethead who had a brief tenure with the band and even performed with them at the VMAs.

If you are one of the older hardcore fans of the band then it's hard to say whether or not you will like this album. I personally am not a huge fan and while I miss Slash I don't think that's going to make the new band suck. So I say take it for what it's worth. It's a good rock album. Nothing more nothing less.

My score: 8.0/10