Do I want to love the new Guns N’ Roses album. Hell yes I do, desperately; however it falls short as a true Guns N’ Roses album. Where is the anger? Where’s the live sounding band that I miss from “Appetite For Destruction”? I don’t expect them to clone Appetite or not grow as a band, but so much of the soul in GNR is gone.
Lets start with the positives on the album. Axls voice is 95% of what it used to be. I was amazed too. He sounds REALLY good on this album. I would have to say as good if not better than on “Use Your Illusions I & II”. It’s no surprise because I am sure this is what held up the album for so long. I imagine take after take of Axl in the studio and lots of auto-tune on his voice. I see him drinking his champagne and smoking his long filtered cigarettes.
The new album suffers from a lack of energy. Appetite was so popular because it was an assault on your ears. The guitars were cranked and they sounded like they were about to explode with you in the room. The vocals were on the edge of cracking every other line and the drummer was beating the living shit out of the drums. The band was a beautiful train wreck that never seemed to crash. I don’t care how Appetite was recorded but to me it sounded like it was recorded in a warehouse in about three days with the band playing live. That’s what made it fucking incredible and so visceral. It’s what made it an album to last the ages.
Chinese Democracy sounds synthetic. Is this due to the fact that over 20 years have passed since Appetite was recorded? Some of it might be that, but I think most of it is the constant work that was being done to the album to “Polish” it up. A true Guns N’ Roses album doesn’t need to be polished, it needs to be dirty and dangerous. Appetite should have come with an anti-bacterial rag to clean your ears after listening to it. The new one seems like I could perform surgery on the disc itself and that’s not what I want from GNR.
So as far as this being a GNR album it’s pretty terrible. All of the critics and listeners out there that think they are going to get that magic again are in for a world of hurt. This is NOT a sequel to Use Your Illusions. This is a totally different band and should have been treated that way. To use the iconic name of Guns N’ Roses on the front of this is Axls way of trying to hold onto the past. He was dead wrong to use the name for this album, but then again he is shit nuts, what do we expect from a crazy fucker like him.
As a stand-alone Axl Rose solo album it’s actually pretty good. It’s very sterile sounding and quite mature if I can use those words next to Axls name. If this would have been advertised as an Axl Rose solo album I think it would have done better. I know it’s going to do okay because it has the GNR logo stamped on the front, but it would have done better in the long run as something from just Axl.
Buckethead is a great guitar player but throughout the album it sounds like he is playing through a guitar POD rather than a live amp that sounds like it’s on the verge of exploding like Slash and Izzy used. This would have helped the sound of the album. This still doesn’t help the overall feel of the album being kind of wimpy. It’s not a bubble gum album, it’s a solid rock album, but the rage is missing. The dark side of society is gone. The seedy under-belly of urban life as a rock band is gone. The old Guns N’ Roses couldn’t have cared less about the rest of the world. They were self-centered assholes who fucked women and didn’t even give them cab fare afterwards. They slept through breakfast, drank their lunches, snorted their dinners, and had multiple women for desert. All of that is missing from this album, which is fine; you have to grow up sometime. But Slash, Izzy, Axl, Duff and Steven never have to grow up. 20 years have passed since that album and Appetite is still alive and kickin’.Neil Young summed it up nicely and this album falls short of this: Hey, Hey, My, My. Rock and Roll can never die. But on this album, as far as GNR goes, their dead.
Bottom line: If you liked Appetite and didn’t mind Use Your Illusions, then this album is going to suck for you. If you look at this album as Axl putting out a solo record 10+ years after Guns and Roses broke up then it’s a solid B in my book. I’m going to pretend it’s an Axl Rose solo album and just enjoy it for what it is; a half way decent rock and roll album.
Michael
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