I Don’t Believe There’s a Reason

Chinese Democracy is a huge disappointment. No not because of the music, but just because it was released at all. For the seventeen years since Guns n’ Roses last released a studio album, Chinese Democracy became this mythical figure, much like Big Foot you could find blurry video on YouTube of songs, but there wasn’t any hard facts that it actually existed besides a name. Had Vegas had it on its book, I would have put money on China becoming a Democratic state before Chinese Democracy was actually released.

Well, come to think of it, the music is pretty disappointing too. Of course unless it was the best album of the past seventeen years, the album was going to be disappointing no matter how good it was if you have had to wait more than half your life for. Not surprisingly, seventeen years of tinkering on songs has led to an album so overproduced Britney Spears would think it is too shiny.

Chinese Democracy puts the duel heads of Use Your Illusion in perspective. On the albums you had the punk influenced, riff heavy songs like Garden of Eden and the bombastic ten minute long Estranged. It is clear with Velvet Revolver that Slash wanted the riff-centric Guns n’ Roses while Rose wanted to push the group into the more theatrical rock as most of Chinese Democracy, even though don’t reach the length of some of the Use Your Illusion songs, they just feel as long sometimes.

Not surprisingly considering that is when a bulk of the music was started, the album sounds like a mix of hard rock from the mid-nineties. This is actually a good thing because if you think of it, the Foo Fighters are making the best hard rock music of the ’00, and , and no disrespect to Dave Grohl, but that isn’t a good sign for the genre these days. The title-track is a shred heavy monster, Shackler’s Revenge starts with a bunch of shrieks and technology blips that sound from the Trent Reznor laboratory, the alt-rock of Better, the atmospheric rock of The Verve on Sorry with each song morphing two or more genres in by the end.

With its piano and sappy beginning, you may think Street of Dreams was sung by a country artist until Axl trades in the baritone start for his signature squeal and moves the song into a November Rain type power balled. But in the end, there is just too much tinkering and second guessing that just brings down an otherwise solid album that may have sounded fresh fifteen years ago. As disappointing as Chinese Democracy is, on the bright side we all got a free Dr. Pepper out of it (well I would have if the Dr. Pepper website did not crash and their customer service number was not busy all day, they better extend this). And there is always Detox to make fun of.

Song to Download - Catcher in the Rye

Chinese Democracy gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.