Gli amici attorno sono cambiati quasi tutti, ma Axl sa darci ancora dentro con 'Knockin' On Heaven's Door'...
mercoledì 31 dicembre 2008
mercoledì 3 dicembre 2008
sabato 22 novembre 2008
martedì 18 novembre 2008
After-Listening Reviews of ' Chinese Democracy'
THE STATISTICS SPEAK for themselves. 14 years, 14 studios, a minimum of five producers, at least the same amount of guitarists, a revolving door of session players and mind-boggling sums of money. But ultimately, Chinese Democracy, the first new album of original songs to appear under the Guns N' Roses banner since 1991, is the story of one man. Axl Rose, the wayward kid from Indiana turned razorblade-voiced global rock icon and one of the last decade's most mysterious recluses, has finally put his tools down. The saga is over.
Phil Alexander, MOJO's Editor-In-Chief, will be bringing you the full MOJO analysis very soon, but since we've just heard the thing, we thought it only fair to give you our immediate impressions of the record most thought had been assigned to the archive of legendary might-have-beens – along with The Beach Boys’ Smile and that Johnny Marr/Ian McCulloch record they left in the back of a cab.
First impressions are of an overwhelming avalanche of activity (ideas, sounds, stuff) – as much as might conceivably be stuffed into a 14-track rock album – and a surprisingly up-to-date sound.
1. Chinese Democracy
A sprinkling of background voices and the sound of street-side rattle begin a song ignited by the sort of propellant, processed guitar incisions that saturate all of the album's full-tilt offerings. Here is the mechanised underbelly of Rose's 21st Century debut. "All I've got is precious time," he sings.
2. Shackler's Revenge
Axl harmonises with himself as a furious wall of pitch-shifting guitars bite into a Foo Fighters-esque rumble that is so jammed-packed full of overdubs, it's a wonder he manages to maintain any structure whatsoever. Released with the new instalment of the mega-selling Rock Band video game, could this also be a dig at his old sparring partner Slash? "Don't ever try to tell me, how much you care for me / Don't ever try to tell me, how you were there for me," he growls.
3. Better
"This melody inside of me still searches for solution". The verse is a pop-rock groove that evokes Pacific nights and sunset drives. The chorus on the other hand is a pulverising minor-key rant augmented by more trilling axe-work and a final guitar solo surely ear-marked for one-time Chinese Democracy contributor Brian May. (Queen's guitarist ruminates on Axl' s latest halfway down the page).
4. Street Of Dreams
Played live during Guns N'Roses most recent outings and led by Axl’s long-serving piano man Dizzy Reed, this gargantuan, Jim Steinman-flavoured ballad was originally called The Blues. November Rain fans should be queuing around the block.
5. If the World
A break-beat intro; a sparse melody punctuated by a clutch of power chord shimmies and a Spanish flavoured acoustic guitar flourish that immediately reminded your correspondent of Use Your Illusion I’s Double Talkin' Jive.
6. There Was A Time
Almost 7 minutes long, this is one of Chinese Democracy's defining moments. "It was a bargain for the summer,” rues Axl, “And I thought I had it all". Phalanxes of guitars engage in panoramic battle with a gloriously histrionic vocal – he’s lost none of his power, or he hadn’t at whatever point in the last 14 years he recorded this – before it signs off with a burst of an unnecessarily digitised choir.
7. Catcher N' The Rye
Axl's nod to J.D Salinger's outsider opus is split into sections that could quite happily soundtrack the credit sequence to a frat-boy rom-com. Fans of Guns’ most melodic offerings should find solace here. Unsurprising to see Queen producer Roy Thomas Baker’s name on the credits.
8. Scraped
An impenetrable, gothic head-mess of damaged distortion and chordal-riff guitars, this is one of the album's most brutal tracks.
9. Riad N' Bedouins
In my notes I wrote the word “defibrillator”. A wired and awakening sound (the army of guitars, the piercing high notes) that's followed by Axl Rose screaming defiant epithets such as: “I don't give a fuck about this ’cos I’m crazy!”
10. Sorry
Electro-pulsing, Pink Floyd-esque ballad that throws up this chorus-opening: “I'm sorry for you / Not sorry for me”, before opening out into a Gilmouresque guitar solo.
11. I.R.S.
Axl: “Gonna call the president / Gonna call a private eye / Gonna get the IRS / Gonna need the FBI”. The man's paranoia is made explicit through another wall of dense guitars and scattershot solos.
12. Madagascar
A processional anthem replete with excerpts from Martin Luther King's I Had A Dream speech, this is a track that's been battered around since the late '90s (see the band's MTV performance here . Once again we find Axl betrayed, imploring, "Forgive them that teared (sic) down my soul / Bless them that they might grow old / And free them so that they may know / That it's never too late". Did he pen these lyrics as he saw Guns fall apart in the mid-‘90s? It’s all a bit biblical.
13. This I Love
Axl Rose the record-head. Witness the melancholic, Elton John-style piano and the soaring verses. It’s a heraldic drama straight from the fantasyland of Queen II and quite possibly the most heartfelt song on the record. Everything he's been striving for since Use Your Illusion II's Estranged. Andrew Lloyd-Webber wouldn't balk at this.
14. Prostitute
Chinese Democracy ends as it begins in grand, posturing style. “I’ve got a message for you,” sings the man that for so long has refused to say a word. Those tinny, break-beat drums appear again, as do layer upon layer of furiously overdriven guitars. One final ambient wash of organ and then, just like that, he’s gone.
So there it is. A brash, unashamedly super-sized cacophony of songs that are overdubbed to hell, but occasionally hint at the monolithic power Axl has been chasing all these years. If his voice – that vitriolic screeeeeech – often sounds like it's making its way back from a time when the original line-up of the band ruled the world, perhaps that was inevitable.
By Ross Bennett - MOJO
When Guns n'Roses last released their own material, it was an event of not inconsiderable cultural significance. I remember the excitement at school as everyone rushed out to spend what was to us a small fortune on the two CDs, one red and orange, one black and blue. Stores opened specially for the release of Use Your Illusion I and II in 1991 - these days, only computer games or new IKEA stores warrant that kind of obsession. What's more, you couldn't imagine something so preposterous as that grand statement being allowed in the current state of the music industry. Yet Chinese Democracy has managed to make itself an event, with speculation as to when it might appear dominating the press for years, and Dr Pepper foolhardily offering a can of pop to every American if the record saw light of day in 2008. Other media more pompous than the Quietus (that's you Gigwise and the Guardian Guide) have seen fit to compile crass lists of notable events that have happened since GNR's last release. I had a great shit on March 21st 1998, as it happens, but I don't see what it has to do with this piece. So after all the waiting, the speculation, the hype, the press releases that are more about marketing campaigns than the record, will the new Guns n'Roses album actually be any good? Or will the legendarily nuts Axl Rose, without Slash and co behind him, have disappeared into bloated irrelevance? I headed down to Universal Records in Kensington to find out.
Chinese Democracy
The title track opens with mighty portents of doom, strange sounds, murmuring voices, the promise of something wonderful and terrible coming over the horizon... which, given 17 years and ten minutes hanging around in the lobby of Universal HQ, exactly what we ought to be expecting. But then, instead of the Art of War manifest in song, a rather straight-forward riff takes over, and Axl starts singing about "Iron fists" and "missionaries and visionaries". It's a solid start, nonetheless.
Shackler's Revenge
Given the title, I was hoping for a GNR sea shanty about some old salt who devotes his life to ploughing the waves in a sloop in search of his avowed enemy M Le Saucisson who gave him the peg leg back in 1793. Instead, it's a grinding beast that's -hopefully- going to be evidence of an industrial influence throughout the rest of the record; there's a lovely aggressive, snatched-at almost new-wave guitar riff too. Oddly, we get to hear Rose singing in a low register before the nasal whine of yore comes in. It does sound as if his larynx is giving him gip in his advanced years. Is that why it's taken so long? A week of vocal takes then a few months on the lozenges? Still, if this keeps up Chinese Democracy has the potential to be all that the build-up has promised it to be...
Better
Like the first track, this has a diverting opening, percussion and tremulous vocal dancing with bits and pieces of electronica. It follows on well from 'Shackler's Revenge', and gets me hoping that Rose has produced an album that'll justify the $13 million spent... But his voice starts to dominate the track, as the music becomes a murky soup beneath. It doesn't seem to know what it wants to be, this one, so many ideas coming up for air before being subsumed in the maelstrom that nothing of note manages to escape. Goes on a bit too. Uh oh.
Street of Dreams
Dizzy tinkling on the ivories, a sense of imminent bombast... for a split second you could imagine this being on one of the Illusions then... oh dear. When Rose decides to sing in a lower register it just doesn't work, an uncomfortable growl that, when he climbs steeply up to the trademarked screech, shows how the years have been unkind to that famous voice. It's hardly Rose's fault, though, use your nose, throat and chest to sing with rather than your lungs and your singing career is always going to be defeated by strain - Liam Gallagher suffers in the same way. Suddenly the piano disappears under a another indifferent bit of soloing before a marshalling yard's worth of string tracks splurges out over everything. "I don't know what I should do", Rose sings. Which is exactly the problem here, once again too many ideas gilding the lily so heavily that it sinks down into the oomska. You can hear a goodly chunk of those millions of dollar bills burning here.
If The World
Again, this is a track with too many bitty concepts that never mesh, in this case a Spanish guitar trick that's present for the start but never quite knows what to do with itself, save wave a red rag at a bull of hulking guitar before getting trampled under its ungainly hooves. Guns n'Roses made such a unique sound in the early 90s, yet metal has evolved, fractured, and been reborn so many times since then that you get the feeling that Rose doesn't quite know which bits to borrow from, and which to leave on the shelf. The muddle here seems to suggest insecurity, and it's a far cry from the bold, aggressive tones of 'Shackler's Revenge'. The Spanish guitar resurfaces at about 4.22, and you can't help but ask yourself why they bothered having it there at all.
There Was A Time
Here they go AGAIN: a choral start. That promptly disappears until a couple of seconds before the end of the track. You get the feeling that there are stacks and stacks of this sort of thing lying around, brilliant ideas that everyone forgot they'd had until they played them back a few years later, and thought might as well be used somewhere. Rose is singing about lawyers, cocaine and California, which is never going to be of much interest to us humble lay folk. Once more, the production is too confining and this portentous edifice of a track is never allowed to flex and breathe, so different from the old GNR, where brilliant musicians came together to make the ridiculous plausible, leaping across the genres in the process.
Catcher In The Rye
A song inspired by a novel that most read as part of a literate teenage rebellion perhaps suggests that Rose's personality has become trapped in his formative years by massive fame at a tender age, a Peter Pan figure holed up in his mansion since the death of his mother in 1996. Cod psychology aside, this is a generically rocking filler track - and albums this expensive, this long in the making, should not carry filler tracks. Look at the Illusions - two records with nary a duff track.
Scraped
This is a bit more like it, a big hulking riff and Rose's phrasing pretty interesting over the top of it too, even if it does get a bit uncomfortably nu-metal when he sings "no-one can make you do what you want to". The vocals dominate the track again, and when you consider that Rose is essentially performing a duet between his roar and his screech, it's once more underlined that this is very much a solo project painstakingly pieced together in the studio rather than a breathing, living, organic band.
Riad N'Bedouins
Another brighter moment, even if I've no idea what that title's all about. Interestingly, some of the music sounds like something the Manic Street Preachers might have concocted had their Guns n'Roses fascination extended into the writing for the Holy Bible .
Sorry
A ballad where Rose's voice has an effect that makes it sound like it comes from a man with slimy plastic cheeks. Despite the title, it's not a sign of a new humility from Rose, instead he sings that he's sorry for someone or other who's done him wrong. There's finally a stab at an old fashioned GNR bit of soloing, but it sounds like something Slash left back down the back of the sofa in 1989. His fluid, graceful/sleazy and inventive playing is really missed on Chinese Democracy.
I.R.S.
Who the hell sings songs about the tax man? "Wouldn't be the first time I've been robbed", Rose complains. It could be a complicated metaphor for stolen time, or something, but I doubt it. It's a pretty decent track... but "pretty decent" isn't good enough when you consider the epic, arrogant, grandiose achievement of the Illusion double whammy. Like so many front men, Rose needs a band around him, to goad him on, to reign him in, to weave louche magic around his mercurial presence. Even the crunching rhythm guitars of yore are in a different league to the generic rock plodding on display here.
Madagascar
The sleeve credits are a great read here, promising samples from Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, Cool Hand Luke, Casualties of Ware, Seven and, er, Mel Gibson's English-bashing historical rewrite Braveheart. Strangely enough, the same "What we've got here is failure to communicate..." sample as the band used in 'Civil War' nearly two decades ago. It's a mistake, putting this muddled commentary on war/conflict/and stuff in direct contrast with the older, far superior track. Musically its more of the same, technically superb in every way, but deathly cold. There just aren't enough personalities on this record.
This I Love
The only track credited to Rose alone, this is a bit of a schlocky ballad with some dodgy rhyming going on, "goodbye/why", "light/bright/night". There are hints of Queen, but not bold enough to lift the track. More light drizzle than 'November Rain'.
Prostitute
"I'm misunderstood / Please be kind / I've done all I could" is Rose's plaintive farewell. Without a lyrics sheet (presumably locked in a Universal vault, a naked intern strapped to a TNT trigger in case anyone tries to breach it) it's hard to pick out exactly what Rose is trying to say, whether he's speaking through the mouth of a practitioner of the world's oldest profession to try and justify what he's been up to in the garden shed for all these years. Yet it's hard not to have the feeling that Chinese Democracy has been too much of a dictatorship to succeed, rigid autocracy conjuring non-existent divisions out of the map as the forces of indifference batter down the citadel. Those tattooed, bouffant rapscallions who drank and fucked and snorted and injected their way through the charts in the late 1980s were a perfect gang, five individuals (of whom Axl Rose was only one) causing a riot both onstage and in the studio. Look back and ask yourself the question, would it have even been possible to top Appetite For Destruction and the mighty Use Your Illusion pairing? Those were records made by certain, special people in a certain time - no amount of money and egotistical insanity could ever come close to replicating them. Crucially, unlike that brilliant run of albums, this is not a pop record. No doubt a sizable chunk of the GNR faithful will feel enfranchised by this, but it's hard not to see Chinese Democracy as a tragic failure. Yet, we have to ask ourselves, could it have been any other way?
THE QUIETUS
The new record from Guns N' Roses is a scorcher. Hard to believe I'm actually writing these words, but Guns N' Roses is back. Axl Rose rules and his new 14 tracks are going to make lots of non-believers freak out. Thursday, we had a sneak preview of the record and man oh man, the first single Chinese Democracy does not indicate the direction of the album: the thing is vintage GNR, and makes you think that Slash, Duff and Izzy were little more than well-dressed sidemen. We'll have a full review posted on Tuesday, but after giving this thing a test drive, let no man question the genius of Axl -- Guns N' Roses, the best album of 2008? Could very well be. Rock on.
[NOTE: This isn't a proper review, but a preview of the album. The writer was given the chance to listen to the album once in its entirety. These are his first impressions. We will have a full review once the album is released.]
• Chinese Democracy -- This song is terrible. The over-dubbed Axl vocals are grating and the title is horrid, this is what made people believe the record would blow.
• Shackler's Revenge – Vintage Appetite. Play this song for any GNR fan and I guarantee they will love it. Huge, huge monster riffs.
• Better -- The best song on the record? Could be. You can almost hear Duff in the background and it has that sweeping optimism of Rocket Queen. This is Axl doing his sensitive thug thing, hard rock has really sounded this good.
• Street of Dreams -- The album's November Rain. Axl on the piano, and that voice: Still better than anything on the radio today. The Killers? Snow Patrol? Feist? Man, listening to this, you can almost see the hurricane in the video. The wedding with Erin Everly and Slash with his top hat and no shirt? Here's some lyrics: "I never wanted you to be so full of anger/I never wanted you to be someone else."
• If the World -- A groovy track with a Blaxploitation monster guitar riff. Sounds like Heavy Metal Shaft.
• There Was a Time -- The record's first cocaine reference, at seven minutes this song changes tones more times than a 17-year-old girl's cell phone.
• Catcher N' the Rye -- Embarrassing title. Pretty lame song.
• Scraped -- This has Axl sort of rapping with himself and is pretty lame. Additionally, on the album's credits there are seven people credited with "additional Pro Tools."
• Riad N' the Bedouins -- This sounds like Alice in Chains, who, like Weezer, is thanked in the album's liner notes. Why does Axl thank Weezer? Who knows. But maybe Spike Jonze could make a video for this song.
• Sorry -- Another awesome ballad. This record is so, so good. Here's some lyrics: "You don't know why I never give in/To hell with the pressure/I'm not caving in."
• I.R.S. -- Great rock n' roll song. Axl has one of the best voices of all-time. At three minutes, the song turns into a juggernaut.
• Madagascar -- This represents both the best and worst of Axl. Why is he sampling Martin Luther King? The song is pretty straight-forward awesome, but Axl makes it over-blown. Love the ambition. Love the song. But clearances for MLK - as well as Braveheart and David Fincher's Seven - probably are one of the inconsequential additions that kept this really great record from coming out for so long.
• This I Love -- Such a great Axl piano ballad, and again at 3-minutes in it becomes a rock n' roll anthem. The Axl Rose high voice is better than anyone from Thom Yorke to Chris Martin. And how much better is Guns N' Roses than either of those whimpy, navel-gazing British bands?
• Prostitute -- Again, echoes of Rocket Queen, probably the best song off Appetite for Destruction.
OK: this record is no Appetite, although we only got a single listen and will write more when the disc is sent out for a proper review. Mr. Brownstone? Welcome to the Jungle? Sweet Child? For men of a certain age, those songs are as ingrained in our consciousness as Family Ties, 21 Jump Street, Alf and Arsenio Hall. I love this new Guns N' Roses record. And if you remember when video music channels actually played music videos, you probably will, too.
By Ben Kaplan - NATIONAL POST
I’ve had a listen to the long overdue Chinese Democracy and can confirm it’s one of the most unashamedly over-the-top rock records ever.
It is so lavish that even the contribution of Queen’s BRIAN MAY, a scorching guitar solo, was left on the cutting room floor by mastermind AXL ROSE.
The poodle-haired guitarist told me: “It is a shame. I put quite a lot of work in and was proud of it.
“But I could understand if Axl wants to have an album which reflects the work of the members of the band as it is right now.”
The CD, out on November 24, has taken on mythical status. I didn’t think it would see the light of day.
But the band’s manager, ANDY GOULD, explained: “When they asked MICHELANGELO to paint the Sistine Chapel they didn’t say, ‘Can you do it in the fourth quarter?’
“Great art sometimes takes time.” I’m inclined to agree. The album is heavy in places but also shows Rose’s vulnerable side.
Stormers Shackler’s Revenge and Scraped, with Axl howling: “Don’t you try and stop us now, cos I won’t let you”, and berserk thrash-metal track Riad N’ The Bedouins, will please headbangers.
On the other hand, Street Of Dreams, with its sweeping strings and tinkling pianos, could have featured on THE BEATLES’ classic album Abbey Road.
Soppy ballad If The World sounds like a vintage Bond theme.
The most startling offering, This I Love, is like a 19th Century waltz while Sorry could be the ultimate power ballad.
Chinese Democracy is lavish, ludicrous...and quite brilliant.
No one else on the planet is making music like this at the moment and label Universal are so confident that they have pressed an unprecedented three million copies ahead of the CD’s release.
The fact Axl is the only one left from the original line-up won’t stop it flying off the shelves.
But there’s one place you won’t be able to buy the record — it’s already been banned in China.
THE SUN
Notes on the new Guns N' Roses album
Earlier today we attended a listening party for the new Guns N' Roses album, Chinese Democracy, which has been an incredible 15 years in the making. Without further ado, here are our first impressions:
The majority of the album features the same industrial beats and heavy guitars of the single - anyone hoping for the sleazy Sunset Strip sound of their debut may be disappointed. In the main, it veers between NIN-style industrial rock and piano ballads.
You like guitar solos? Well there's more here than you could shake a KFC bucket at. The most noteworthy are the outros to 'Shackler's Revenge' and 'This Is Love', both which will have you dusting off your air guitar moves.
There are a couple of attempts to match the bombast of 'November Rain', and with several tracks featuring orchestras and Elton John-style piano, Axl will need a massive dry ice machine come the world tour.
'Streets Of Dreams' sounds in parts like Bon Jovi, features some ball-clenching squeals from Axl and has a huge key change right at the end that even Mariah Carey would consider crass.
If you ever wanted to hear Guns N' Roses do a Bond theme then skip straight to 'Madagascar', which features trumpets, tons of strings and an overblown crescendo. It also nabs samples from Martin Luther King speeches and Mel Gibson in Braveheart.
Axl shows his romantic side on 'This I Love', crooning: "I heard she'd never leave me, please God you must believe me." Aww, sweet!
'Catcher In The Rye' should probably be the next single. It has an operatic, stadium rock feel and sounds like it could have sprung from Axl's recording sessions with Brian May.
We're not sure what the barmiest track is, but the near-emo sound of 'Better' and mixture of dub, Spanish strings and robotic drums that is 'If The World' are prime contenders.
Guns N' Roses release Chinese Democracy on November 24, with our full review to come nearer to release date. Get your cans of Dr Pepper at the ready!
By Alex Fletcher, Entertainment Reporter - DIGITAL SPY
Guns N' Roses codependents are rejoicing over Chinese Democracy's long-awaited release, perhaps the most-delayed album in rock history.
But think, for a second, about our fragile economy: According to a 2005 New York Times story, Axl Rose spent more than $13 million recording this thing; if left unsatisfied, his appetite for construction might keep the West Hollywood service industry afloat for another decade. Is now really the best time for this gravy train to pull into the station?
You bet.
An outrageously overblown pop-metal extravaganza, Chinese Democracy feels like a perfect epitaph for all the absurdity and nonsense of the George W. Bush era -- one final blowout before Principal Obama takes our idiocy away.
The music toggles between two primary modes: grinding industrial rock and keys-and-strings balladry. (Imagine Rammstein covering Wings, basically.) Yet to that blueprint Rose and his battalion of musicians (including no fewer than five guitarists) append every trick new money can buy: hip-hop beats, Middle Eastern–influenced riffs, space-cowboy atmospherics, and, of course, Rose's still-astounding vocals, often multitracked into a paranoid boys chorus.
Singling out highlights seems antithetical to Rose's double-widescreen vision, but with their memorable melodies, "Better," "This I Love," and "Riad N' the Bedouins" (say what?) rise above the aural onslaught.
Blast ’em at top volume as you wave good-bye to our yellow brick road.
Mikael Wood - SPIN
In their heyday, Guns N' Roses were remarkable for their ability to ride catastrophe. Following Use Your Illusion I and II, however, in 1991, huge fissures developed in the band, which even they couldn't endure. One by one, the original band members left, most fatefully guitarist Slash, apparently unable to endure the “dictatorial” tendencies of singer Axl Rose.
Work on this, their first album proper since then, actually began in the mid-90s. However, it's been made in such fits and starts, with such a liquid line-up (even Brian May dropped in at one point) that it would be a miracle of Sistine proportions if it amounted to anything coherent and consistent.
Such worries are, sadly, not without foundation. Soundwise, Chinese Democracy is all over the place. Tracks actually vary in volume according to their disparate ages, with the likes of “I.R.S.” (around on bootleg for years) quite clearly having been cut and finished years before the track that precedes it.
A similarly tangled story accompanies the music. Chinese Democracy is evidently the work of a man becoming progressively more interested in avant-rock forms: virtually every track on Chinese Democracy starts out sounding like it might amount to something that extends GNR’s parameters in truly unexpected directions (noir-ish ambient, electronic, even brass band on “Madagascar”). However, Rose's experimental hankerings generally give out after about 10 seconds. Oh Slash, where art thou?
Scouring the album for redeeming moments, one could cite the steely, futurist angst of “Shackler's Revenge” and the pianistic “This I Love”, which in making Elton John and Freddie Mercury sound like Chas N' Dave, must at least merit some kind of high camp award. And in “Prostitute” Rose offers a hint of atonement which excites fleeting sympathy. What kind of surreal pass has your life come to, after all, when you get involved in a fistfight with Tommy Hilfiger?
With rumours that the original G N'R are set to reform next year, and mega metal currently in the ascendancy, the insanity looks set to carry on regardless.
2*
DAVID STUBBS - UNCUT
How much idle conjecture has there been over Chinese Democracy? Axl Rose has had 17 years to turn this vanity project into absolute gold. It has to be a masterpiece. It has to be the best album of the 21st century.
I say “vanity project” because Rose is the only founding member remaining in Guns N’ Roses. I say “vanity project” because he has taken 17 bloody years to write one album!
After all this time, it would be a travesty to give the fans exactly what they’re expecting, and by and large, the fans are expecting an album which sounds like Guns N’ Roses. Axl always maintained that he was taking his time in order to create something new; something special.
This year has already seen albums from two of the greatest hard rock bands of the lasats twenty years. Metallica went back to their roots and AC/DC decided to retain the usage of the words “Rock” and “Black” in as many songs as possible.
Both albums were hugely successful. Neither album reinvented either band’s sound.
The last proper thing we heard from Gn’R was in 1999 when they contributed the huge, overblown, industrial-sounding ‘Oh My God’ to the End Of Days soundtrack. It sounded promising. It gave us the hope that Chinese Democracy wasn’t far away. Oh how we laugh now.
The next thing we hear is the title track from Chinese Democracy. It sounds like Marilyn Manson playing The Darkness’ ‘I Believe In A Thing Called Love’. Everybody shrugged and said the rest of the album will be great. The rest of the album had to be great.
‘Shackler’s Revenge’ follows on with the electronic, industrial theme but does it better than the single. The fantastically meaty production is the first thing that hits you and Axl is starting to sound a bit more like Axl.
‘Better’ is an evasive musical manoeuvre as a gentle intro makes way for an explosion. The song grows and grows and could definitely work with a video. Single alert!
Another leftward shift is found on ‘There Was A Time’. Judging by the production notes, it’s the song that had the most time spent on it but it sounds nothing like what you might expect from Guns. Rolling thunder and the sound of thousands of cans of fizzy pop are opening. Interesting song.
The bass-driven ‘Riad N’ Bedouins’ and the superbly heavy ‘Scraped’ are mid-album pleasers but their unfamiliarity in both sound and style means that the full effect of these songs will only be felt in a few months, if indeed the album draws us in enough for a repeat listen.
‘If The World’ could be a Bond theme, but it isn’t. It’s not ‘Live & Let Die’ or ‘Goldfinger’ but it’s definitely going for the same theme. Indeed, Oscar-tipped spy drama, Body Of Lies has it on its soundtrack. Not Bond though, is it.
It’s like Axl Rose has the ambition and he has the quality and he definitely has had the time, but he just hasn’t maximised the potential. Every track seems to miss the mark a bit. Instead of hitting the bright yellow bullseye, the arrow flies into the red, or even the blue.
What has Axl Rose done with Guns N’ Roses? He has made that new(ish) sound that he wanted in the most part but then you get tracks like ‘Catcher In The Rye’ (you’ll be singing along to this) and ‘Madagascar’ (the new, less good ‘November Rain’) which sound like the Gn’R that we know.
Is that really what we want, though? Is that really what Axl Rose spent all this time doing? After all, he crushed Slash by turning down his work in favour of a new direction. To retain the old sound would be to turn the Chinese Democracy into a long-awaited hypocrisy.
Axl’s voice means that it still definitely does sound like Guns, but the solos seem tacked on. It’s like Rose couldn’t find riffs up to Slash’s standards so he trawled the LA guitarists-with-one-name agency and only got Buckethead and Bumblefoot. Not quite the same.
You will buy Chinese Democracy. You will listen to it as soon as you get home. Then you’ll sit there and think disappointedly, “Well, it’s not crap but…” Then it will stay on your CD rack and in your iTunes because you’ll have forgotten about it.
3/6
Raziq Rauf TRASH HITS
Phil Alexander, MOJO's Editor-In-Chief, will be bringing you the full MOJO analysis very soon, but since we've just heard the thing, we thought it only fair to give you our immediate impressions of the record most thought had been assigned to the archive of legendary might-have-beens – along with The Beach Boys’ Smile and that Johnny Marr/Ian McCulloch record they left in the back of a cab.
First impressions are of an overwhelming avalanche of activity (ideas, sounds, stuff) – as much as might conceivably be stuffed into a 14-track rock album – and a surprisingly up-to-date sound.
1. Chinese Democracy
A sprinkling of background voices and the sound of street-side rattle begin a song ignited by the sort of propellant, processed guitar incisions that saturate all of the album's full-tilt offerings. Here is the mechanised underbelly of Rose's 21st Century debut. "All I've got is precious time," he sings.
2. Shackler's Revenge
Axl harmonises with himself as a furious wall of pitch-shifting guitars bite into a Foo Fighters-esque rumble that is so jammed-packed full of overdubs, it's a wonder he manages to maintain any structure whatsoever. Released with the new instalment of the mega-selling Rock Band video game, could this also be a dig at his old sparring partner Slash? "Don't ever try to tell me, how much you care for me / Don't ever try to tell me, how you were there for me," he growls.
3. Better
"This melody inside of me still searches for solution". The verse is a pop-rock groove that evokes Pacific nights and sunset drives. The chorus on the other hand is a pulverising minor-key rant augmented by more trilling axe-work and a final guitar solo surely ear-marked for one-time Chinese Democracy contributor Brian May. (Queen's guitarist ruminates on Axl' s latest halfway down the page).
4. Street Of Dreams
Played live during Guns N'Roses most recent outings and led by Axl’s long-serving piano man Dizzy Reed, this gargantuan, Jim Steinman-flavoured ballad was originally called The Blues. November Rain fans should be queuing around the block.
5. If the World
A break-beat intro; a sparse melody punctuated by a clutch of power chord shimmies and a Spanish flavoured acoustic guitar flourish that immediately reminded your correspondent of Use Your Illusion I’s Double Talkin' Jive.
6. There Was A Time
Almost 7 minutes long, this is one of Chinese Democracy's defining moments. "It was a bargain for the summer,” rues Axl, “And I thought I had it all". Phalanxes of guitars engage in panoramic battle with a gloriously histrionic vocal – he’s lost none of his power, or he hadn’t at whatever point in the last 14 years he recorded this – before it signs off with a burst of an unnecessarily digitised choir.
7. Catcher N' The Rye
Axl's nod to J.D Salinger's outsider opus is split into sections that could quite happily soundtrack the credit sequence to a frat-boy rom-com. Fans of Guns’ most melodic offerings should find solace here. Unsurprising to see Queen producer Roy Thomas Baker’s name on the credits.
8. Scraped
An impenetrable, gothic head-mess of damaged distortion and chordal-riff guitars, this is one of the album's most brutal tracks.
9. Riad N' Bedouins
In my notes I wrote the word “defibrillator”. A wired and awakening sound (the army of guitars, the piercing high notes) that's followed by Axl Rose screaming defiant epithets such as: “I don't give a fuck about this ’cos I’m crazy!”
10. Sorry
Electro-pulsing, Pink Floyd-esque ballad that throws up this chorus-opening: “I'm sorry for you / Not sorry for me”, before opening out into a Gilmouresque guitar solo.
11. I.R.S.
Axl: “Gonna call the president / Gonna call a private eye / Gonna get the IRS / Gonna need the FBI”. The man's paranoia is made explicit through another wall of dense guitars and scattershot solos.
12. Madagascar
A processional anthem replete with excerpts from Martin Luther King's I Had A Dream speech, this is a track that's been battered around since the late '90s (see the band's MTV performance here . Once again we find Axl betrayed, imploring, "Forgive them that teared (sic) down my soul / Bless them that they might grow old / And free them so that they may know / That it's never too late". Did he pen these lyrics as he saw Guns fall apart in the mid-‘90s? It’s all a bit biblical.
13. This I Love
Axl Rose the record-head. Witness the melancholic, Elton John-style piano and the soaring verses. It’s a heraldic drama straight from the fantasyland of Queen II and quite possibly the most heartfelt song on the record. Everything he's been striving for since Use Your Illusion II's Estranged. Andrew Lloyd-Webber wouldn't balk at this.
14. Prostitute
Chinese Democracy ends as it begins in grand, posturing style. “I’ve got a message for you,” sings the man that for so long has refused to say a word. Those tinny, break-beat drums appear again, as do layer upon layer of furiously overdriven guitars. One final ambient wash of organ and then, just like that, he’s gone.
So there it is. A brash, unashamedly super-sized cacophony of songs that are overdubbed to hell, but occasionally hint at the monolithic power Axl has been chasing all these years. If his voice – that vitriolic screeeeeech – often sounds like it's making its way back from a time when the original line-up of the band ruled the world, perhaps that was inevitable.
By Ross Bennett - MOJO
When Guns n'Roses last released their own material, it was an event of not inconsiderable cultural significance. I remember the excitement at school as everyone rushed out to spend what was to us a small fortune on the two CDs, one red and orange, one black and blue. Stores opened specially for the release of Use Your Illusion I and II in 1991 - these days, only computer games or new IKEA stores warrant that kind of obsession. What's more, you couldn't imagine something so preposterous as that grand statement being allowed in the current state of the music industry. Yet Chinese Democracy has managed to make itself an event, with speculation as to when it might appear dominating the press for years, and Dr Pepper foolhardily offering a can of pop to every American if the record saw light of day in 2008. Other media more pompous than the Quietus (that's you Gigwise and the Guardian Guide) have seen fit to compile crass lists of notable events that have happened since GNR's last release. I had a great shit on March 21st 1998, as it happens, but I don't see what it has to do with this piece. So after all the waiting, the speculation, the hype, the press releases that are more about marketing campaigns than the record, will the new Guns n'Roses album actually be any good? Or will the legendarily nuts Axl Rose, without Slash and co behind him, have disappeared into bloated irrelevance? I headed down to Universal Records in Kensington to find out.
Chinese Democracy
The title track opens with mighty portents of doom, strange sounds, murmuring voices, the promise of something wonderful and terrible coming over the horizon... which, given 17 years and ten minutes hanging around in the lobby of Universal HQ, exactly what we ought to be expecting. But then, instead of the Art of War manifest in song, a rather straight-forward riff takes over, and Axl starts singing about "Iron fists" and "missionaries and visionaries". It's a solid start, nonetheless.
Shackler's Revenge
Given the title, I was hoping for a GNR sea shanty about some old salt who devotes his life to ploughing the waves in a sloop in search of his avowed enemy M Le Saucisson who gave him the peg leg back in 1793. Instead, it's a grinding beast that's -hopefully- going to be evidence of an industrial influence throughout the rest of the record; there's a lovely aggressive, snatched-at almost new-wave guitar riff too. Oddly, we get to hear Rose singing in a low register before the nasal whine of yore comes in. It does sound as if his larynx is giving him gip in his advanced years. Is that why it's taken so long? A week of vocal takes then a few months on the lozenges? Still, if this keeps up Chinese Democracy has the potential to be all that the build-up has promised it to be...
Better
Like the first track, this has a diverting opening, percussion and tremulous vocal dancing with bits and pieces of electronica. It follows on well from 'Shackler's Revenge', and gets me hoping that Rose has produced an album that'll justify the $13 million spent... But his voice starts to dominate the track, as the music becomes a murky soup beneath. It doesn't seem to know what it wants to be, this one, so many ideas coming up for air before being subsumed in the maelstrom that nothing of note manages to escape. Goes on a bit too. Uh oh.
Street of Dreams
Dizzy tinkling on the ivories, a sense of imminent bombast... for a split second you could imagine this being on one of the Illusions then... oh dear. When Rose decides to sing in a lower register it just doesn't work, an uncomfortable growl that, when he climbs steeply up to the trademarked screech, shows how the years have been unkind to that famous voice. It's hardly Rose's fault, though, use your nose, throat and chest to sing with rather than your lungs and your singing career is always going to be defeated by strain - Liam Gallagher suffers in the same way. Suddenly the piano disappears under a another indifferent bit of soloing before a marshalling yard's worth of string tracks splurges out over everything. "I don't know what I should do", Rose sings. Which is exactly the problem here, once again too many ideas gilding the lily so heavily that it sinks down into the oomska. You can hear a goodly chunk of those millions of dollar bills burning here.
If The World
Again, this is a track with too many bitty concepts that never mesh, in this case a Spanish guitar trick that's present for the start but never quite knows what to do with itself, save wave a red rag at a bull of hulking guitar before getting trampled under its ungainly hooves. Guns n'Roses made such a unique sound in the early 90s, yet metal has evolved, fractured, and been reborn so many times since then that you get the feeling that Rose doesn't quite know which bits to borrow from, and which to leave on the shelf. The muddle here seems to suggest insecurity, and it's a far cry from the bold, aggressive tones of 'Shackler's Revenge'. The Spanish guitar resurfaces at about 4.22, and you can't help but ask yourself why they bothered having it there at all.
There Was A Time
Here they go AGAIN: a choral start. That promptly disappears until a couple of seconds before the end of the track. You get the feeling that there are stacks and stacks of this sort of thing lying around, brilliant ideas that everyone forgot they'd had until they played them back a few years later, and thought might as well be used somewhere. Rose is singing about lawyers, cocaine and California, which is never going to be of much interest to us humble lay folk. Once more, the production is too confining and this portentous edifice of a track is never allowed to flex and breathe, so different from the old GNR, where brilliant musicians came together to make the ridiculous plausible, leaping across the genres in the process.
Catcher In The Rye
A song inspired by a novel that most read as part of a literate teenage rebellion perhaps suggests that Rose's personality has become trapped in his formative years by massive fame at a tender age, a Peter Pan figure holed up in his mansion since the death of his mother in 1996. Cod psychology aside, this is a generically rocking filler track - and albums this expensive, this long in the making, should not carry filler tracks. Look at the Illusions - two records with nary a duff track.
Scraped
This is a bit more like it, a big hulking riff and Rose's phrasing pretty interesting over the top of it too, even if it does get a bit uncomfortably nu-metal when he sings "no-one can make you do what you want to". The vocals dominate the track again, and when you consider that Rose is essentially performing a duet between his roar and his screech, it's once more underlined that this is very much a solo project painstakingly pieced together in the studio rather than a breathing, living, organic band.
Riad N'Bedouins
Another brighter moment, even if I've no idea what that title's all about. Interestingly, some of the music sounds like something the Manic Street Preachers might have concocted had their Guns n'Roses fascination extended into the writing for the Holy Bible .
Sorry
A ballad where Rose's voice has an effect that makes it sound like it comes from a man with slimy plastic cheeks. Despite the title, it's not a sign of a new humility from Rose, instead he sings that he's sorry for someone or other who's done him wrong. There's finally a stab at an old fashioned GNR bit of soloing, but it sounds like something Slash left back down the back of the sofa in 1989. His fluid, graceful/sleazy and inventive playing is really missed on Chinese Democracy.
I.R.S.
Who the hell sings songs about the tax man? "Wouldn't be the first time I've been robbed", Rose complains. It could be a complicated metaphor for stolen time, or something, but I doubt it. It's a pretty decent track... but "pretty decent" isn't good enough when you consider the epic, arrogant, grandiose achievement of the Illusion double whammy. Like so many front men, Rose needs a band around him, to goad him on, to reign him in, to weave louche magic around his mercurial presence. Even the crunching rhythm guitars of yore are in a different league to the generic rock plodding on display here.
Madagascar
The sleeve credits are a great read here, promising samples from Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, Cool Hand Luke, Casualties of Ware, Seven and, er, Mel Gibson's English-bashing historical rewrite Braveheart. Strangely enough, the same "What we've got here is failure to communicate..." sample as the band used in 'Civil War' nearly two decades ago. It's a mistake, putting this muddled commentary on war/conflict/and stuff in direct contrast with the older, far superior track. Musically its more of the same, technically superb in every way, but deathly cold. There just aren't enough personalities on this record.
This I Love
The only track credited to Rose alone, this is a bit of a schlocky ballad with some dodgy rhyming going on, "goodbye/why", "light/bright/night". There are hints of Queen, but not bold enough to lift the track. More light drizzle than 'November Rain'.
Prostitute
"I'm misunderstood / Please be kind / I've done all I could" is Rose's plaintive farewell. Without a lyrics sheet (presumably locked in a Universal vault, a naked intern strapped to a TNT trigger in case anyone tries to breach it) it's hard to pick out exactly what Rose is trying to say, whether he's speaking through the mouth of a practitioner of the world's oldest profession to try and justify what he's been up to in the garden shed for all these years. Yet it's hard not to have the feeling that Chinese Democracy has been too much of a dictatorship to succeed, rigid autocracy conjuring non-existent divisions out of the map as the forces of indifference batter down the citadel. Those tattooed, bouffant rapscallions who drank and fucked and snorted and injected their way through the charts in the late 1980s were a perfect gang, five individuals (of whom Axl Rose was only one) causing a riot both onstage and in the studio. Look back and ask yourself the question, would it have even been possible to top Appetite For Destruction and the mighty Use Your Illusion pairing? Those were records made by certain, special people in a certain time - no amount of money and egotistical insanity could ever come close to replicating them. Crucially, unlike that brilliant run of albums, this is not a pop record. No doubt a sizable chunk of the GNR faithful will feel enfranchised by this, but it's hard not to see Chinese Democracy as a tragic failure. Yet, we have to ask ourselves, could it have been any other way?
THE QUIETUS
The new record from Guns N' Roses is a scorcher. Hard to believe I'm actually writing these words, but Guns N' Roses is back. Axl Rose rules and his new 14 tracks are going to make lots of non-believers freak out. Thursday, we had a sneak preview of the record and man oh man, the first single Chinese Democracy does not indicate the direction of the album: the thing is vintage GNR, and makes you think that Slash, Duff and Izzy were little more than well-dressed sidemen. We'll have a full review posted on Tuesday, but after giving this thing a test drive, let no man question the genius of Axl -- Guns N' Roses, the best album of 2008? Could very well be. Rock on.
[NOTE: This isn't a proper review, but a preview of the album. The writer was given the chance to listen to the album once in its entirety. These are his first impressions. We will have a full review once the album is released.]
• Chinese Democracy -- This song is terrible. The over-dubbed Axl vocals are grating and the title is horrid, this is what made people believe the record would blow.
• Shackler's Revenge – Vintage Appetite. Play this song for any GNR fan and I guarantee they will love it. Huge, huge monster riffs.
• Better -- The best song on the record? Could be. You can almost hear Duff in the background and it has that sweeping optimism of Rocket Queen. This is Axl doing his sensitive thug thing, hard rock has really sounded this good.
• Street of Dreams -- The album's November Rain. Axl on the piano, and that voice: Still better than anything on the radio today. The Killers? Snow Patrol? Feist? Man, listening to this, you can almost see the hurricane in the video. The wedding with Erin Everly and Slash with his top hat and no shirt? Here's some lyrics: "I never wanted you to be so full of anger/I never wanted you to be someone else."
• If the World -- A groovy track with a Blaxploitation monster guitar riff. Sounds like Heavy Metal Shaft.
• There Was a Time -- The record's first cocaine reference, at seven minutes this song changes tones more times than a 17-year-old girl's cell phone.
• Catcher N' the Rye -- Embarrassing title. Pretty lame song.
• Scraped -- This has Axl sort of rapping with himself and is pretty lame. Additionally, on the album's credits there are seven people credited with "additional Pro Tools."
• Riad N' the Bedouins -- This sounds like Alice in Chains, who, like Weezer, is thanked in the album's liner notes. Why does Axl thank Weezer? Who knows. But maybe Spike Jonze could make a video for this song.
• Sorry -- Another awesome ballad. This record is so, so good. Here's some lyrics: "You don't know why I never give in/To hell with the pressure/I'm not caving in."
• I.R.S. -- Great rock n' roll song. Axl has one of the best voices of all-time. At three minutes, the song turns into a juggernaut.
• Madagascar -- This represents both the best and worst of Axl. Why is he sampling Martin Luther King? The song is pretty straight-forward awesome, but Axl makes it over-blown. Love the ambition. Love the song. But clearances for MLK - as well as Braveheart and David Fincher's Seven - probably are one of the inconsequential additions that kept this really great record from coming out for so long.
• This I Love -- Such a great Axl piano ballad, and again at 3-minutes in it becomes a rock n' roll anthem. The Axl Rose high voice is better than anyone from Thom Yorke to Chris Martin. And how much better is Guns N' Roses than either of those whimpy, navel-gazing British bands?
• Prostitute -- Again, echoes of Rocket Queen, probably the best song off Appetite for Destruction.
OK: this record is no Appetite, although we only got a single listen and will write more when the disc is sent out for a proper review. Mr. Brownstone? Welcome to the Jungle? Sweet Child? For men of a certain age, those songs are as ingrained in our consciousness as Family Ties, 21 Jump Street, Alf and Arsenio Hall. I love this new Guns N' Roses record. And if you remember when video music channels actually played music videos, you probably will, too.
By Ben Kaplan - NATIONAL POST
I’ve had a listen to the long overdue Chinese Democracy and can confirm it’s one of the most unashamedly over-the-top rock records ever.
It is so lavish that even the contribution of Queen’s BRIAN MAY, a scorching guitar solo, was left on the cutting room floor by mastermind AXL ROSE.
The poodle-haired guitarist told me: “It is a shame. I put quite a lot of work in and was proud of it.
“But I could understand if Axl wants to have an album which reflects the work of the members of the band as it is right now.”
The CD, out on November 24, has taken on mythical status. I didn’t think it would see the light of day.
But the band’s manager, ANDY GOULD, explained: “When they asked MICHELANGELO to paint the Sistine Chapel they didn’t say, ‘Can you do it in the fourth quarter?’
“Great art sometimes takes time.” I’m inclined to agree. The album is heavy in places but also shows Rose’s vulnerable side.
Stormers Shackler’s Revenge and Scraped, with Axl howling: “Don’t you try and stop us now, cos I won’t let you”, and berserk thrash-metal track Riad N’ The Bedouins, will please headbangers.
On the other hand, Street Of Dreams, with its sweeping strings and tinkling pianos, could have featured on THE BEATLES’ classic album Abbey Road.
Soppy ballad If The World sounds like a vintage Bond theme.
The most startling offering, This I Love, is like a 19th Century waltz while Sorry could be the ultimate power ballad.
Chinese Democracy is lavish, ludicrous...and quite brilliant.
No one else on the planet is making music like this at the moment and label Universal are so confident that they have pressed an unprecedented three million copies ahead of the CD’s release.
The fact Axl is the only one left from the original line-up won’t stop it flying off the shelves.
But there’s one place you won’t be able to buy the record — it’s already been banned in China.
THE SUN
Notes on the new Guns N' Roses album
Earlier today we attended a listening party for the new Guns N' Roses album, Chinese Democracy, which has been an incredible 15 years in the making. Without further ado, here are our first impressions:
The majority of the album features the same industrial beats and heavy guitars of the single - anyone hoping for the sleazy Sunset Strip sound of their debut may be disappointed. In the main, it veers between NIN-style industrial rock and piano ballads.
You like guitar solos? Well there's more here than you could shake a KFC bucket at. The most noteworthy are the outros to 'Shackler's Revenge' and 'This Is Love', both which will have you dusting off your air guitar moves.
There are a couple of attempts to match the bombast of 'November Rain', and with several tracks featuring orchestras and Elton John-style piano, Axl will need a massive dry ice machine come the world tour.
'Streets Of Dreams' sounds in parts like Bon Jovi, features some ball-clenching squeals from Axl and has a huge key change right at the end that even Mariah Carey would consider crass.
If you ever wanted to hear Guns N' Roses do a Bond theme then skip straight to 'Madagascar', which features trumpets, tons of strings and an overblown crescendo. It also nabs samples from Martin Luther King speeches and Mel Gibson in Braveheart.
Axl shows his romantic side on 'This I Love', crooning: "I heard she'd never leave me, please God you must believe me." Aww, sweet!
'Catcher In The Rye' should probably be the next single. It has an operatic, stadium rock feel and sounds like it could have sprung from Axl's recording sessions with Brian May.
We're not sure what the barmiest track is, but the near-emo sound of 'Better' and mixture of dub, Spanish strings and robotic drums that is 'If The World' are prime contenders.
Guns N' Roses release Chinese Democracy on November 24, with our full review to come nearer to release date. Get your cans of Dr Pepper at the ready!
By Alex Fletcher, Entertainment Reporter - DIGITAL SPY
Guns N' Roses codependents are rejoicing over Chinese Democracy's long-awaited release, perhaps the most-delayed album in rock history.
But think, for a second, about our fragile economy: According to a 2005 New York Times story, Axl Rose spent more than $13 million recording this thing; if left unsatisfied, his appetite for construction might keep the West Hollywood service industry afloat for another decade. Is now really the best time for this gravy train to pull into the station?
You bet.
An outrageously overblown pop-metal extravaganza, Chinese Democracy feels like a perfect epitaph for all the absurdity and nonsense of the George W. Bush era -- one final blowout before Principal Obama takes our idiocy away.
The music toggles between two primary modes: grinding industrial rock and keys-and-strings balladry. (Imagine Rammstein covering Wings, basically.) Yet to that blueprint Rose and his battalion of musicians (including no fewer than five guitarists) append every trick new money can buy: hip-hop beats, Middle Eastern–influenced riffs, space-cowboy atmospherics, and, of course, Rose's still-astounding vocals, often multitracked into a paranoid boys chorus.
Singling out highlights seems antithetical to Rose's double-widescreen vision, but with their memorable melodies, "Better," "This I Love," and "Riad N' the Bedouins" (say what?) rise above the aural onslaught.
Blast ’em at top volume as you wave good-bye to our yellow brick road.
Mikael Wood - SPIN
In their heyday, Guns N' Roses were remarkable for their ability to ride catastrophe. Following Use Your Illusion I and II, however, in 1991, huge fissures developed in the band, which even they couldn't endure. One by one, the original band members left, most fatefully guitarist Slash, apparently unable to endure the “dictatorial” tendencies of singer Axl Rose.
Work on this, their first album proper since then, actually began in the mid-90s. However, it's been made in such fits and starts, with such a liquid line-up (even Brian May dropped in at one point) that it would be a miracle of Sistine proportions if it amounted to anything coherent and consistent.
Such worries are, sadly, not without foundation. Soundwise, Chinese Democracy is all over the place. Tracks actually vary in volume according to their disparate ages, with the likes of “I.R.S.” (around on bootleg for years) quite clearly having been cut and finished years before the track that precedes it.
A similarly tangled story accompanies the music. Chinese Democracy is evidently the work of a man becoming progressively more interested in avant-rock forms: virtually every track on Chinese Democracy starts out sounding like it might amount to something that extends GNR’s parameters in truly unexpected directions (noir-ish ambient, electronic, even brass band on “Madagascar”). However, Rose's experimental hankerings generally give out after about 10 seconds. Oh Slash, where art thou?
Scouring the album for redeeming moments, one could cite the steely, futurist angst of “Shackler's Revenge” and the pianistic “This I Love”, which in making Elton John and Freddie Mercury sound like Chas N' Dave, must at least merit some kind of high camp award. And in “Prostitute” Rose offers a hint of atonement which excites fleeting sympathy. What kind of surreal pass has your life come to, after all, when you get involved in a fistfight with Tommy Hilfiger?
With rumours that the original G N'R are set to reform next year, and mega metal currently in the ascendancy, the insanity looks set to carry on regardless.
2*
DAVID STUBBS - UNCUT
How much idle conjecture has there been over Chinese Democracy? Axl Rose has had 17 years to turn this vanity project into absolute gold. It has to be a masterpiece. It has to be the best album of the 21st century.
I say “vanity project” because Rose is the only founding member remaining in Guns N’ Roses. I say “vanity project” because he has taken 17 bloody years to write one album!
After all this time, it would be a travesty to give the fans exactly what they’re expecting, and by and large, the fans are expecting an album which sounds like Guns N’ Roses. Axl always maintained that he was taking his time in order to create something new; something special.
This year has already seen albums from two of the greatest hard rock bands of the lasats twenty years. Metallica went back to their roots and AC/DC decided to retain the usage of the words “Rock” and “Black” in as many songs as possible.
Both albums were hugely successful. Neither album reinvented either band’s sound.
The last proper thing we heard from Gn’R was in 1999 when they contributed the huge, overblown, industrial-sounding ‘Oh My God’ to the End Of Days soundtrack. It sounded promising. It gave us the hope that Chinese Democracy wasn’t far away. Oh how we laugh now.
The next thing we hear is the title track from Chinese Democracy. It sounds like Marilyn Manson playing The Darkness’ ‘I Believe In A Thing Called Love’. Everybody shrugged and said the rest of the album will be great. The rest of the album had to be great.
‘Shackler’s Revenge’ follows on with the electronic, industrial theme but does it better than the single. The fantastically meaty production is the first thing that hits you and Axl is starting to sound a bit more like Axl.
‘Better’ is an evasive musical manoeuvre as a gentle intro makes way for an explosion. The song grows and grows and could definitely work with a video. Single alert!
Another leftward shift is found on ‘There Was A Time’. Judging by the production notes, it’s the song that had the most time spent on it but it sounds nothing like what you might expect from Guns. Rolling thunder and the sound of thousands of cans of fizzy pop are opening. Interesting song.
The bass-driven ‘Riad N’ Bedouins’ and the superbly heavy ‘Scraped’ are mid-album pleasers but their unfamiliarity in both sound and style means that the full effect of these songs will only be felt in a few months, if indeed the album draws us in enough for a repeat listen.
‘If The World’ could be a Bond theme, but it isn’t. It’s not ‘Live & Let Die’ or ‘Goldfinger’ but it’s definitely going for the same theme. Indeed, Oscar-tipped spy drama, Body Of Lies has it on its soundtrack. Not Bond though, is it.
It’s like Axl Rose has the ambition and he has the quality and he definitely has had the time, but he just hasn’t maximised the potential. Every track seems to miss the mark a bit. Instead of hitting the bright yellow bullseye, the arrow flies into the red, or even the blue.
What has Axl Rose done with Guns N’ Roses? He has made that new(ish) sound that he wanted in the most part but then you get tracks like ‘Catcher In The Rye’ (you’ll be singing along to this) and ‘Madagascar’ (the new, less good ‘November Rain’) which sound like the Gn’R that we know.
Is that really what we want, though? Is that really what Axl Rose spent all this time doing? After all, he crushed Slash by turning down his work in favour of a new direction. To retain the old sound would be to turn the Chinese Democracy into a long-awaited hypocrisy.
Axl’s voice means that it still definitely does sound like Guns, but the solos seem tacked on. It’s like Rose couldn’t find riffs up to Slash’s standards so he trawled the LA guitarists-with-one-name agency and only got Buckethead and Bumblefoot. Not quite the same.
You will buy Chinese Democracy. You will listen to it as soon as you get home. Then you’ll sit there and think disappointedly, “Well, it’s not crap but…” Then it will stay on your CD rack and in your iTunes because you’ll have forgotten about it.
3/6
Raziq Rauf TRASH HITS
lunedì 3 novembre 2008
CHINESE DEMOCRACY - THE SINGLE: SOME REVIEWS
Eccovi alcune recensioni pubblicate dopo l'uscita del singolo "Chinese Democracy", anticipatore dell'omonimo attesissimo album...
CHART ATTACK - JOSH VISSER
Since Jesus Christ and Satan didn't get together to jam on the title track of Guns N'
Roses' decade-plus-in-the-making Chinese Democracy, expectations won't be met for this song. But that aside, "Chinese Democracy," which hit radio today, is a pretty rad track. Once Axl Rose's patented banshee scream kicks in over a thunderous guitar riff, all the hype and bullshit go out the window. The song features dueling Axl vocals (the high-pitched one and the low growling one from "It's So Easy"), and the redheaded one goes on angrily about something vaguely political in the verses ("Blame it on the Falun Gong/They've see the end and you can't hold on now"). The song's soaring guitars seem to build towards a killer chorus that never quite happens. Instead, there's a ripping guitar solo (some combo of Robin Finck, Buckethead and Ron Thal) that almost makes up for having nothing to sing along to. The outro is classic GN'R, but on steroids — guitars blazing, multiple Axls screaming — and there's just a bit too much going on. This song ain't no "Paradise City" or "Welcome To The Jungle," but it stands tall against any other GN'R rocker, and that's not something rock radio can say very often these days.
SUNDAY MERCURY - STEVE WOLLASTON
I first started listening to Guns and Roses in 1987, my obsession with their music is just as strong now as it was when I was a teenager listening to Appetite For Destruction for the first time.
I have since 1987 trailed the band, their ups and downs, the on-going sagas and the solo projects and waited patiently for Chinese Democracy to arrive.
Some said it never would, the real fans knew different, they saw beyond the joke, I have heard the bootlegs, we all have and they are in some cases truly stunning tracks.
I have seen the raw power of the new tracks come into their own when played live, songs like Madagascaar and There Was a Time stand shoulder to shoulder with previous epics like Estranged and November Rain, If The World and Prostitute show a more poignant and thoughtful side to the music and indeed Rose's songwriting.
I write this on the back of unfinished gems that I have seen on the Internet, I don't condone people leaking tracks but they have certainly made me that little bit more eager to add this to my collection.
The release of Chinese Democracy the single has happened quite quickly and taken people by surprise, some have slated it, others are impressed - now we have heard the finished version of this track it will be interesting to see how polished the others sound.
It doesn't matter what Guns and Roses release, the reaction will be the same, many people won't see beyond the media circus surrounding the release and will wonder what all the fuss is about. Others will expect it to be the greatest album of all time - it's not, but I think people will be surprised at just how good it is.
Of course Slash, Duff, Izzy on the album would have been the dream ticket but that won't happen, didn't happen and isn't an issue... the one mistake Axl Rose made was not launching this as a solo project, he would have had less abuse - but he worked hard to build the name, he owns it, so why not?
My view is simple, listen to the album two or three times and I reckon you will be impressed, if you were a fan before I think you will be a fan now. The music is a mature progression from Use Your Illusion and has a depth and variety that certainly no other artist has tried to create in recent times, to record an album over 13 years and it not sound dated is an art in itself!
I just can't wait to hear all those b-sides and studio tracks that didn't make the grade over the 13-year selection period!
SPIN - STEVE KANDELL
Maybe it's the fact that I'm listening to it on my computer and not, say, in a car, that makes it feel less than real. After all, we've been here before: (alleged) tracks from the mythic, Sasquatch-like Chinese Democracy leaked last year, and we downloaded them, tentatively, straining to hear some sort of genetic connection to the Guns N' Roses we all remember and romanticize. It seemed as if this long story was going to come to an end with a whimper. And a shrug. And here we are again, only without the shady back-alley torrent-site-dealings or fear of RIAA reprisal.
"Chinese Democracy," the first single from the actually-existing Guns N' Roses album of the same name, was released today. Officially. Legally. (The album is available November 23, exclusively from Best Buy. Unless of course, it isn't.)
Once that weird shock wears off, there's the small matter of, you know, whether or not it's any good. Which is to say: Is it as bad as we all assume it's gonna be?
Answer: Kinda, but then again, not really!
Those fearing/expecting an overly synthesized, 1999-vintage techno-metal can rest easy-ish. Once the overture of muffled voices, ominous drums, and plinky Edge-ish guitar gives way to a thick, muscular four-chord riff and that Axl banshee wail, only the most stubbornly jaded will manage to suppress the goosebump reflex. The verses are double-tracked: half high-pitched Axl, half guttural, growly Axl. But then a funny thing happens before the song gets to the chorus: IT FUCKING ENDS.
Sure, there's some suitably Slashy wankery from, oh, I don't know, Bumblefuck, the guy who plays with a honey-coated beehive on his head, or whichever other guitarist is currently under contract, but it's a bit confounding that the first (official, legal) taste of the Most Anticipated Album, Like, Ever -- and from the human who wrote "Paradise City," no less -- is utterly and completely hook-free. I've listened to it 12 times in one sitting and cannot hum a bar.
Then again, I was able to listen to it 12 times in one sitting. Maybe we should take our victories small, and wherever we can get them.
Now (Finally) Hear This: Guns N' Roses - "Chinese Democracy"
CHICAGO/McCLATCHY TRIBUNE - GREG KOT
Guns N’ Roses fans, the wait is over.
“Chinese Democracy,” the title track from the band’s first studio album since 1991, was released Wednesday to radio stations. The track was also available online, where it was streaming on various Web sites.
Was the wait worth it? Axl Rose is the only band member left from the band’s original incarnation and so this is essentially a solo project.
Rose sings in the lower end of his range, save for the introduction where his heavily processed voice sounds like a distant air-raid siren; otherwise, the wicked-witch cackle that defined his Sunset Strip bad-boy incarnation in the ’80s sits this one out.
The track indicates that Rose hasn’t gone soft. But technical prowess is no substitute for a great song.
Beneath the six-string buzz there really isn’t much of a melody, or even a memorable hook. After 17 years, this is the best tune Rose could conjure for the lead single?
Not a promising sign for an album that is supposedly going to be made available exclusively at Best Buy stores the week of Nov. 23.
IN MUSIC - ELIZABETH BROMSTEIN
This ain't no Welcome to the Jungle
The first single off of Guns N Roses' Chinese Democracy made a long awaited radio debut this week. Seventeen years! That's how long it took. So, if you have a 17-year-old kid, take a good look at him/her and think about how long it took to get this point. Then imagine that kid had cost you $13 million (the reported cost this far of producing Chinese Democracy). You'd expect that kid to be pretty awesome right? Like a psychic philanthropist with early masters degrees in Physics and English lit., and perhaps a fledgling multi-million dollar business on the side.
But OK, wait. I just got it. Maybe the album was NEVER supposed to come out. Maybe it was like, when pigs fly: this album will be released when China becomes a democratic nation. Or something like that. The National Post quotes Stephen Davies, author of Watch You Bleed, a new unauthorized biography of GNR as saying, "I think [Axl is] definitely getting bullied into releasing this record now."
Whatever the case, here we are. So, how's single?
It starts with a long build up (not unlike the wait for the album) and has a mildly catchy hook and some pretty smoking guitar work. But the lyrics aren't as inspired as I had hoped. I think he says, "It don't really matter. Guess I'll keep it to myself. I said it don't really matter. It's time I look around for somebody else," which doesn't exactly stand up when you compare it to Mr. Brownstone, Night Train, November Rain or Estranged. Also, there's no REAL hook, like a pumping chorus and the driving rhythm is plodding.
Slash himself said in his book that he didn't realize how much of a force drummer Steve Adler was behind Appetite for Destruction until years later. And it's pretty apparent now. You don't know a great rhythm section until you don't have one. Axl's voice appears to have held up pretty well though. And we're all just so happy to see him doing something right?
Is Chinese Democracy the equivalent of that amazing 17-year-old 13-million-dollar kid? In a word: no. But I'm going to reserve judgment until the whole record comes out in late November.
THE TELEGRAPH'S BLOG - NEIL McCORMICK
Confirmation that Guns N' Roses long awaited ‘Chinese Democracy' is not just a figment of Axl Rose's imagination finally arrived when radio stations began playing it today.
It's a very slow starter, but hey, after 15 years what's another minute or so of messing about?
Clearly, Axl is not a man in a hurry. There's 45 seconds of people talking while an orchestra tunes up before the snare drums crashes down and an understated guitar arpeggio joins the warm up.The actual power chord riff that signals that the band is ready to rock doesn't kick in till the minute mark, and Axl doesn't let out his trademark scream till 1 minute thirty seconds.
The opening line is "It doesn't really matter," which you might think was a bit defeatist after all that preamble, but the song itself is surprisingly lean, mean and to the point, verging on old school power pop with extra twiddling (it sounds like they might have spent most of the last two decades mixing guitars).
Linking onanism and politics, Axl rhymes ‘masturbation' with ‘rule the nation', but I couldn't actually work out what the connection was, or what the song is supposed to be about, but that's par for the course in the genre. There's a lead solo at 3.15, the purpose of which seems to be to set the record for the number of notes that can be played per bar. It's sparky but not particularly memorable. Slash is unlikely to lose sleep.
The song climaxes at 4.20 but then there's another 25 seconds of fading rumble, presumably while the band catch their breath. The whole thing lasts nearly five minutes, but I only make that about three minutes of actual song, the rest is just a kind of elaborate set of bookends, lending the whole experience an air of self importance. Still, after all that time, you can forgive them for making a meal of their comeback.
The problem with taking so long to make a record, of course, is that anticipation creates added expectation, until anything less than a groundbreaking masterpiece is going to be a disappointment.
But if you can forget about the millions of dollars and thousands of man hours, Chinese Democracy actually sounds like a decent afternoon's work in the studio, which should be enough to satisfy what's left of their fan base.
BLOGSNROSES.COM - WETTNER
No matter how much I wanted to hate this song, I can't.
The song starts out slow. There is a over a minute that is just a long intro until Axl's primal scream announcing to the world he is back and screaming once again.
There are two vocal tracks, both of Axl. One is the higher singing Axl (think My Michelle) and other, the lower register Axl (It's So Easy), is the one front and center. It provides a layer to the song, that I found mildly distracting. Due to the duplicate layer, Axl never mixes the vocal ranges after the primal scream. Something I wish this song had, I wanted it to go higher and grab me by the balls.
The lead guitarist has changed so many times, I have no idea which lead track this is. It could be any number of guitarists, Buckethead, Robin Finck, or Bumblefoot. The most likely explanation is that it is a mixture of all three guitarists. The solo still has that technology "Bleep Bleep Tweak Tweak" sound, so I'll guess that part is Buckethead. The solos in the song sound like a Bumblefoot/Slash solo. Since Slash had nothing to do with the solos, I will guess Bumblefoot on those. The solos are good, but nothing mind blowing.
The lyrics seem to be Axl saying fuck you to those who were impatient to the album and to those criticizing the album. But lyrics are up for interpretation, so read into them what you want. I will say this though, they don't describe a time in a China where democracy rules.
On Appetite for Destruction, Stephen Adler's drums were always audible. You never really had to listen for them. But these drums are in the back. Same thing with the bass. You had to do more listening for it, but take a listen to Think About You. You can hear both drums and bass working together and driving the song. The song Chinese Democracy features vocals, guitars, and drums. Where is the bass? Of course, I Heart Music, wasn't the ideal medium for the single, so I reserve judgment until I hear it on cd.
I actually like the song. I think it is better than some songs on Use Your Illusion I and II. However the biggest strike against it is, it took 14 years for that? If this album were released right after The Spaghetti Incident? There would be no questioning it. This is the current form of Guns N' Roses minus Izzy and Slash and people would have accepted it.
I think if you can put your bias aside, you will find this song isn't bad. Is it Welcome to the Jungle? Fuck no. But is it good? Shit yea. It does make me excited to hear the rest of the album.
L.A. TIMES - ANN POWERS
"Chinese Democracy," the first single from the ridiculously long-awaited Guns N' Roses album of the same name, is out, and can be heard below.
Here are some thoughts the song inspired early this morning.
No pop star has built a fortress as maze-filled and iron-clad as one W. Axl Rose. Not Michael Jackson, whose retreat was forced by scandal as much as by artistic crisis, and who seems ever more weakened by his reputation's slide. Not Zack de la Rocha, who (like Rose) went down countless collaborative roads before revamping the Rage Against the Machine template with his new project, One Day As a Lion. Not Garth Brooks, who also turned hermit, but craved the crowds too much to stay inside.
Rose, the most ambitious hard rocker of the late 20th century -- shout-outs to your Trents and your Bonos, but Axl is the most vividly driven -- essentially quarantined the Guns N' Roses brand for 15 years -- unable, perhaps, to reconcile the sounds in his head with what is humanly possible. "Chinese Democracy," the title track from the album finally coming out in a month, hits like an offering pushed through a crack in a locked gate, hinting that those sounds, never completely apprehended, have now coalesced into something Rose can face.
The sound is murky, ugly and evocative of a dark cityscape; you could call it "Blade Runner rock," because like that 1982 film, it's a very dirty vision of the future. Siren-like effects kick off the track, and then a slicing guitar riff (courtesy of Robin Finck, perhaps, or Buckethead -- the credits should be clarified whenever Rose deigns to do so) punctuated by squiggling, pedal-heavy licks, sets up Rose's multiple-tracked vocal.
"It don't really matter," he sings. "You'll find out for yourself." As the cryptic verses unfold, it becomes clear that this is one of Rose's songs from inside the cage of fame, attacking external forces he despises but can't ignore or repel. Like "Get in the Ring" or "You Could Be Mine," this is Rose as the nastiest kind of punk.
On one level, it's a protest song about Chinese state oppression. More important, it's a spit back at the audience that's been waiting for what has to be a masterpiece, if Rose is to survive artistically.
The song builds like bile. It doesn't behave the way radio-friendly singles usually do. The chorus is just an extension of the verses, rising a little in pitch and compression. There isn't really a proper hook; the sweet release that Slash's solos always brought to the mix never comes. But the refrain sticks after several listens.
"It would take a lot more..." is the key phrase, the one that Rose sings in still-powerful mid-range. More hate, more time. (There's a weird reference to masturbation too, that will have critics and possibly 12-year-olds snickering for a while.) These are the points when the song sounds the most like Nine Inch Nails -- a shot of aggression that somehow contains its own alienated retreat.
"Chinese Democracy" also recalls "I'm Afraid of Americans," David Bowie's 1997 foray with NIN. Both songs have a suffocated quality, as if their makers are pushing through smoke to express these thoughts. It's the sound of florid, romantic rockers aiming for something cold and modern.
But Rose can never really be cold. He's a Heat Miser -- whatever he touches starts to melt in his clutch. That's why these paranoid rockers never quite satisfy the way his grandiose ballads can. As real as Rose's anger may be, in song it starts to feel overly put on, in need of a sweeping chorus (or Slash-like ringing solo) to relieve the tension of the pose.
Still, for all the pooh-poohing this song will inevitably earn because it's just been too long in coming to fulfill all hopes, "Chinese Democracy" brings back a passionate weirdness that the hard rock airwaves have lacked. However overwrought or undercooked the whole album may be, it's good to have this mad king venturing forth over his moat.
GUARDIAN/THE OBSERVER - ELIZABETH DAY
It got its first radio airplay in the States last week, prompting a collective gasp of underwhelmed incredulity. 'We're confident in saying that "Chinese Democracy" is certainly one of the best songs of the year,' said one review. 'It's just a shame that the year in question is 1991.'
While everyone else has spent the past few years logging on to MySpace and downloading from iTunes, it seems as if Axl Rose has been cryogenically frozen in the early Nineties, with his fingerless gloves and his Stars and Stripes bandana.
There is something rather heartening about this refusal to evolve: a bit like one of those ubiquitous reunion tours, but without the bother of having actually to reunite.
Listening to the new single online, I am struck by its uncanny resemblance to the Crocodile Dundee soundtrack and am transported back to a simpler time when we all used to make mix tapes and listen to them on our Walkmans.
The opening bars are punctuated by exotic animal calls and a sort of electro-synthesised kettle drum. The whole thing sounds like one of those pre-recorded programmes you used to get on Casio electric keyboards, perhaps entitled 'Jungle Bossa Nova'.
Then there are Axl Rose's familiarly strangulated vocals, delivering profound lyrics that make no sense but rhyme words like 'missionaries' with 'visionaries'. (Seventeen years is enough to make even the most uninspired rock star polysyllabic.)
In spite of myself, I end up liking it. It's the musical equivalent of a Werther's Original - reassuringly evocative of a simpler age.
But some Guns N' Roses fans are distinctly unimpressed. 'Thanks for taking so long Axl,' typed one on the New York Times website. 'I hardly have any hair left to headbang to this with.'
KUNG FU RODEO - BRITT SCHRAMM
Since I’ve been the voice of dissention concerning W. Axl Rose and his multiple variation of Guns N’ Roses, I thought that the only fair and balanced thing to do would be to review the Chinese Democracy single, which was released worldwide yesterday. I have listened it at least 10 times and took some minor notes so no flying-off-the-handle here.
My initial thoughts are that it has the potential to be a really good hard rock song. The blues riffs of old are weaved around Rose’s trademark growl/high-sung duet. The groove marries well with melody lead by a syth-filtered rhythm guitar, giving the song a flavor of grunge-ish proportions. Really, there is no mistaking that this is a GnR song.
The drawbacks? It’s feels too short and too long at the same time. How can that be , you might be asking yourself? The complete song clocks in at 4:42 but is really around 3:33. There is an 46 sec intro that give an impression that this song is part of a concept CD. The same could be said for the 23 sec ending. Now, in the context of a concept CD, these parts might make more sense to remain. A more judicious hand on the production board might’ve helped in making this song a tighter (and better) track.
Overall, Chinese Democracy, the song, is a decent one and should get its fair amount of airplay. But as a single, especially one that their fans have been waiting for over a decade and half to pull their leathers out for and to rock out to, an in-your-face, immediate impact was needed and with this unneccessary padding, the might of GnR gets somewhat lost in the shuffle.
CHART ATTACK - JOSH VISSER
Since Jesus Christ and Satan didn't get together to jam on the title track of Guns N'
Roses' decade-plus-in-the-making Chinese Democracy, expectations won't be met for this song. But that aside, "Chinese Democracy," which hit radio today, is a pretty rad track. Once Axl Rose's patented banshee scream kicks in over a thunderous guitar riff, all the hype and bullshit go out the window. The song features dueling Axl vocals (the high-pitched one and the low growling one from "It's So Easy"), and the redheaded one goes on angrily about something vaguely political in the verses ("Blame it on the Falun Gong/They've see the end and you can't hold on now"). The song's soaring guitars seem to build towards a killer chorus that never quite happens. Instead, there's a ripping guitar solo (some combo of Robin Finck, Buckethead and Ron Thal) that almost makes up for having nothing to sing along to. The outro is classic GN'R, but on steroids — guitars blazing, multiple Axls screaming — and there's just a bit too much going on. This song ain't no "Paradise City" or "Welcome To The Jungle," but it stands tall against any other GN'R rocker, and that's not something rock radio can say very often these days.
SUNDAY MERCURY - STEVE WOLLASTON
I first started listening to Guns and Roses in 1987, my obsession with their music is just as strong now as it was when I was a teenager listening to Appetite For Destruction for the first time.
I have since 1987 trailed the band, their ups and downs, the on-going sagas and the solo projects and waited patiently for Chinese Democracy to arrive.
Some said it never would, the real fans knew different, they saw beyond the joke, I have heard the bootlegs, we all have and they are in some cases truly stunning tracks.
I have seen the raw power of the new tracks come into their own when played live, songs like Madagascaar and There Was a Time stand shoulder to shoulder with previous epics like Estranged and November Rain, If The World and Prostitute show a more poignant and thoughtful side to the music and indeed Rose's songwriting.
I write this on the back of unfinished gems that I have seen on the Internet, I don't condone people leaking tracks but they have certainly made me that little bit more eager to add this to my collection.
The release of Chinese Democracy the single has happened quite quickly and taken people by surprise, some have slated it, others are impressed - now we have heard the finished version of this track it will be interesting to see how polished the others sound.
It doesn't matter what Guns and Roses release, the reaction will be the same, many people won't see beyond the media circus surrounding the release and will wonder what all the fuss is about. Others will expect it to be the greatest album of all time - it's not, but I think people will be surprised at just how good it is.
Of course Slash, Duff, Izzy on the album would have been the dream ticket but that won't happen, didn't happen and isn't an issue... the one mistake Axl Rose made was not launching this as a solo project, he would have had less abuse - but he worked hard to build the name, he owns it, so why not?
My view is simple, listen to the album two or three times and I reckon you will be impressed, if you were a fan before I think you will be a fan now. The music is a mature progression from Use Your Illusion and has a depth and variety that certainly no other artist has tried to create in recent times, to record an album over 13 years and it not sound dated is an art in itself!
I just can't wait to hear all those b-sides and studio tracks that didn't make the grade over the 13-year selection period!
SPIN - STEVE KANDELL
Maybe it's the fact that I'm listening to it on my computer and not, say, in a car, that makes it feel less than real. After all, we've been here before: (alleged) tracks from the mythic, Sasquatch-like Chinese Democracy leaked last year, and we downloaded them, tentatively, straining to hear some sort of genetic connection to the Guns N' Roses we all remember and romanticize. It seemed as if this long story was going to come to an end with a whimper. And a shrug. And here we are again, only without the shady back-alley torrent-site-dealings or fear of RIAA reprisal.
"Chinese Democracy," the first single from the actually-existing Guns N' Roses album of the same name, was released today. Officially. Legally. (The album is available November 23, exclusively from Best Buy. Unless of course, it isn't.)
Once that weird shock wears off, there's the small matter of, you know, whether or not it's any good. Which is to say: Is it as bad as we all assume it's gonna be?
Answer: Kinda, but then again, not really!
Those fearing/expecting an overly synthesized, 1999-vintage techno-metal can rest easy-ish. Once the overture of muffled voices, ominous drums, and plinky Edge-ish guitar gives way to a thick, muscular four-chord riff and that Axl banshee wail, only the most stubbornly jaded will manage to suppress the goosebump reflex. The verses are double-tracked: half high-pitched Axl, half guttural, growly Axl. But then a funny thing happens before the song gets to the chorus: IT FUCKING ENDS.
Sure, there's some suitably Slashy wankery from, oh, I don't know, Bumblefuck, the guy who plays with a honey-coated beehive on his head, or whichever other guitarist is currently under contract, but it's a bit confounding that the first (official, legal) taste of the Most Anticipated Album, Like, Ever -- and from the human who wrote "Paradise City," no less -- is utterly and completely hook-free. I've listened to it 12 times in one sitting and cannot hum a bar.
Then again, I was able to listen to it 12 times in one sitting. Maybe we should take our victories small, and wherever we can get them.
Now (Finally) Hear This: Guns N' Roses - "Chinese Democracy"
CHICAGO/McCLATCHY TRIBUNE - GREG KOT
Guns N’ Roses fans, the wait is over.
“Chinese Democracy,” the title track from the band’s first studio album since 1991, was released Wednesday to radio stations. The track was also available online, where it was streaming on various Web sites.
Was the wait worth it? Axl Rose is the only band member left from the band’s original incarnation and so this is essentially a solo project.
Rose sings in the lower end of his range, save for the introduction where his heavily processed voice sounds like a distant air-raid siren; otherwise, the wicked-witch cackle that defined his Sunset Strip bad-boy incarnation in the ’80s sits this one out.
The track indicates that Rose hasn’t gone soft. But technical prowess is no substitute for a great song.
Beneath the six-string buzz there really isn’t much of a melody, or even a memorable hook. After 17 years, this is the best tune Rose could conjure for the lead single?
Not a promising sign for an album that is supposedly going to be made available exclusively at Best Buy stores the week of Nov. 23.
IN MUSIC - ELIZABETH BROMSTEIN
This ain't no Welcome to the Jungle
The first single off of Guns N Roses' Chinese Democracy made a long awaited radio debut this week. Seventeen years! That's how long it took. So, if you have a 17-year-old kid, take a good look at him/her and think about how long it took to get this point. Then imagine that kid had cost you $13 million (the reported cost this far of producing Chinese Democracy). You'd expect that kid to be pretty awesome right? Like a psychic philanthropist with early masters degrees in Physics and English lit., and perhaps a fledgling multi-million dollar business on the side.
But OK, wait. I just got it. Maybe the album was NEVER supposed to come out. Maybe it was like, when pigs fly: this album will be released when China becomes a democratic nation. Or something like that. The National Post quotes Stephen Davies, author of Watch You Bleed, a new unauthorized biography of GNR as saying, "I think [Axl is] definitely getting bullied into releasing this record now."
Whatever the case, here we are. So, how's single?
It starts with a long build up (not unlike the wait for the album) and has a mildly catchy hook and some pretty smoking guitar work. But the lyrics aren't as inspired as I had hoped. I think he says, "It don't really matter. Guess I'll keep it to myself. I said it don't really matter. It's time I look around for somebody else," which doesn't exactly stand up when you compare it to Mr. Brownstone, Night Train, November Rain or Estranged. Also, there's no REAL hook, like a pumping chorus and the driving rhythm is plodding.
Slash himself said in his book that he didn't realize how much of a force drummer Steve Adler was behind Appetite for Destruction until years later. And it's pretty apparent now. You don't know a great rhythm section until you don't have one. Axl's voice appears to have held up pretty well though. And we're all just so happy to see him doing something right?
Is Chinese Democracy the equivalent of that amazing 17-year-old 13-million-dollar kid? In a word: no. But I'm going to reserve judgment until the whole record comes out in late November.
THE TELEGRAPH'S BLOG - NEIL McCORMICK
Confirmation that Guns N' Roses long awaited ‘Chinese Democracy' is not just a figment of Axl Rose's imagination finally arrived when radio stations began playing it today.
It's a very slow starter, but hey, after 15 years what's another minute or so of messing about?
Clearly, Axl is not a man in a hurry. There's 45 seconds of people talking while an orchestra tunes up before the snare drums crashes down and an understated guitar arpeggio joins the warm up.The actual power chord riff that signals that the band is ready to rock doesn't kick in till the minute mark, and Axl doesn't let out his trademark scream till 1 minute thirty seconds.
The opening line is "It doesn't really matter," which you might think was a bit defeatist after all that preamble, but the song itself is surprisingly lean, mean and to the point, verging on old school power pop with extra twiddling (it sounds like they might have spent most of the last two decades mixing guitars).
Linking onanism and politics, Axl rhymes ‘masturbation' with ‘rule the nation', but I couldn't actually work out what the connection was, or what the song is supposed to be about, but that's par for the course in the genre. There's a lead solo at 3.15, the purpose of which seems to be to set the record for the number of notes that can be played per bar. It's sparky but not particularly memorable. Slash is unlikely to lose sleep.
The song climaxes at 4.20 but then there's another 25 seconds of fading rumble, presumably while the band catch their breath. The whole thing lasts nearly five minutes, but I only make that about three minutes of actual song, the rest is just a kind of elaborate set of bookends, lending the whole experience an air of self importance. Still, after all that time, you can forgive them for making a meal of their comeback.
The problem with taking so long to make a record, of course, is that anticipation creates added expectation, until anything less than a groundbreaking masterpiece is going to be a disappointment.
But if you can forget about the millions of dollars and thousands of man hours, Chinese Democracy actually sounds like a decent afternoon's work in the studio, which should be enough to satisfy what's left of their fan base.
BLOGSNROSES.COM - WETTNER
No matter how much I wanted to hate this song, I can't.
The song starts out slow. There is a over a minute that is just a long intro until Axl's primal scream announcing to the world he is back and screaming once again.
There are two vocal tracks, both of Axl. One is the higher singing Axl (think My Michelle) and other, the lower register Axl (It's So Easy), is the one front and center. It provides a layer to the song, that I found mildly distracting. Due to the duplicate layer, Axl never mixes the vocal ranges after the primal scream. Something I wish this song had, I wanted it to go higher and grab me by the balls.
The lead guitarist has changed so many times, I have no idea which lead track this is. It could be any number of guitarists, Buckethead, Robin Finck, or Bumblefoot. The most likely explanation is that it is a mixture of all three guitarists. The solo still has that technology "Bleep Bleep Tweak Tweak" sound, so I'll guess that part is Buckethead. The solos in the song sound like a Bumblefoot/Slash solo. Since Slash had nothing to do with the solos, I will guess Bumblefoot on those. The solos are good, but nothing mind blowing.
The lyrics seem to be Axl saying fuck you to those who were impatient to the album and to those criticizing the album. But lyrics are up for interpretation, so read into them what you want. I will say this though, they don't describe a time in a China where democracy rules.
On Appetite for Destruction, Stephen Adler's drums were always audible. You never really had to listen for them. But these drums are in the back. Same thing with the bass. You had to do more listening for it, but take a listen to Think About You. You can hear both drums and bass working together and driving the song. The song Chinese Democracy features vocals, guitars, and drums. Where is the bass? Of course, I Heart Music, wasn't the ideal medium for the single, so I reserve judgment until I hear it on cd.
I actually like the song. I think it is better than some songs on Use Your Illusion I and II. However the biggest strike against it is, it took 14 years for that? If this album were released right after The Spaghetti Incident? There would be no questioning it. This is the current form of Guns N' Roses minus Izzy and Slash and people would have accepted it.
I think if you can put your bias aside, you will find this song isn't bad. Is it Welcome to the Jungle? Fuck no. But is it good? Shit yea. It does make me excited to hear the rest of the album.
L.A. TIMES - ANN POWERS
"Chinese Democracy," the first single from the ridiculously long-awaited Guns N' Roses album of the same name, is out, and can be heard below.
Here are some thoughts the song inspired early this morning.
No pop star has built a fortress as maze-filled and iron-clad as one W. Axl Rose. Not Michael Jackson, whose retreat was forced by scandal as much as by artistic crisis, and who seems ever more weakened by his reputation's slide. Not Zack de la Rocha, who (like Rose) went down countless collaborative roads before revamping the Rage Against the Machine template with his new project, One Day As a Lion. Not Garth Brooks, who also turned hermit, but craved the crowds too much to stay inside.
Rose, the most ambitious hard rocker of the late 20th century -- shout-outs to your Trents and your Bonos, but Axl is the most vividly driven -- essentially quarantined the Guns N' Roses brand for 15 years -- unable, perhaps, to reconcile the sounds in his head with what is humanly possible. "Chinese Democracy," the title track from the album finally coming out in a month, hits like an offering pushed through a crack in a locked gate, hinting that those sounds, never completely apprehended, have now coalesced into something Rose can face.
The sound is murky, ugly and evocative of a dark cityscape; you could call it "Blade Runner rock," because like that 1982 film, it's a very dirty vision of the future. Siren-like effects kick off the track, and then a slicing guitar riff (courtesy of Robin Finck, perhaps, or Buckethead -- the credits should be clarified whenever Rose deigns to do so) punctuated by squiggling, pedal-heavy licks, sets up Rose's multiple-tracked vocal.
"It don't really matter," he sings. "You'll find out for yourself." As the cryptic verses unfold, it becomes clear that this is one of Rose's songs from inside the cage of fame, attacking external forces he despises but can't ignore or repel. Like "Get in the Ring" or "You Could Be Mine," this is Rose as the nastiest kind of punk.
On one level, it's a protest song about Chinese state oppression. More important, it's a spit back at the audience that's been waiting for what has to be a masterpiece, if Rose is to survive artistically.
The song builds like bile. It doesn't behave the way radio-friendly singles usually do. The chorus is just an extension of the verses, rising a little in pitch and compression. There isn't really a proper hook; the sweet release that Slash's solos always brought to the mix never comes. But the refrain sticks after several listens.
"It would take a lot more..." is the key phrase, the one that Rose sings in still-powerful mid-range. More hate, more time. (There's a weird reference to masturbation too, that will have critics and possibly 12-year-olds snickering for a while.) These are the points when the song sounds the most like Nine Inch Nails -- a shot of aggression that somehow contains its own alienated retreat.
"Chinese Democracy" also recalls "I'm Afraid of Americans," David Bowie's 1997 foray with NIN. Both songs have a suffocated quality, as if their makers are pushing through smoke to express these thoughts. It's the sound of florid, romantic rockers aiming for something cold and modern.
But Rose can never really be cold. He's a Heat Miser -- whatever he touches starts to melt in his clutch. That's why these paranoid rockers never quite satisfy the way his grandiose ballads can. As real as Rose's anger may be, in song it starts to feel overly put on, in need of a sweeping chorus (or Slash-like ringing solo) to relieve the tension of the pose.
Still, for all the pooh-poohing this song will inevitably earn because it's just been too long in coming to fulfill all hopes, "Chinese Democracy" brings back a passionate weirdness that the hard rock airwaves have lacked. However overwrought or undercooked the whole album may be, it's good to have this mad king venturing forth over his moat.
GUARDIAN/THE OBSERVER - ELIZABETH DAY
It got its first radio airplay in the States last week, prompting a collective gasp of underwhelmed incredulity. 'We're confident in saying that "Chinese Democracy" is certainly one of the best songs of the year,' said one review. 'It's just a shame that the year in question is 1991.'
While everyone else has spent the past few years logging on to MySpace and downloading from iTunes, it seems as if Axl Rose has been cryogenically frozen in the early Nineties, with his fingerless gloves and his Stars and Stripes bandana.
There is something rather heartening about this refusal to evolve: a bit like one of those ubiquitous reunion tours, but without the bother of having actually to reunite.
Listening to the new single online, I am struck by its uncanny resemblance to the Crocodile Dundee soundtrack and am transported back to a simpler time when we all used to make mix tapes and listen to them on our Walkmans.
The opening bars are punctuated by exotic animal calls and a sort of electro-synthesised kettle drum. The whole thing sounds like one of those pre-recorded programmes you used to get on Casio electric keyboards, perhaps entitled 'Jungle Bossa Nova'.
Then there are Axl Rose's familiarly strangulated vocals, delivering profound lyrics that make no sense but rhyme words like 'missionaries' with 'visionaries'. (Seventeen years is enough to make even the most uninspired rock star polysyllabic.)
In spite of myself, I end up liking it. It's the musical equivalent of a Werther's Original - reassuringly evocative of a simpler age.
But some Guns N' Roses fans are distinctly unimpressed. 'Thanks for taking so long Axl,' typed one on the New York Times website. 'I hardly have any hair left to headbang to this with.'
KUNG FU RODEO - BRITT SCHRAMM
Since I’ve been the voice of dissention concerning W. Axl Rose and his multiple variation of Guns N’ Roses, I thought that the only fair and balanced thing to do would be to review the Chinese Democracy single, which was released worldwide yesterday. I have listened it at least 10 times and took some minor notes so no flying-off-the-handle here.
My initial thoughts are that it has the potential to be a really good hard rock song. The blues riffs of old are weaved around Rose’s trademark growl/high-sung duet. The groove marries well with melody lead by a syth-filtered rhythm guitar, giving the song a flavor of grunge-ish proportions. Really, there is no mistaking that this is a GnR song.
The drawbacks? It’s feels too short and too long at the same time. How can that be , you might be asking yourself? The complete song clocks in at 4:42 but is really around 3:33. There is an 46 sec intro that give an impression that this song is part of a concept CD. The same could be said for the 23 sec ending. Now, in the context of a concept CD, these parts might make more sense to remain. A more judicious hand on the production board might’ve helped in making this song a tighter (and better) track.
Overall, Chinese Democracy, the song, is a decent one and should get its fair amount of airplay. But as a single, especially one that their fans have been waiting for over a decade and half to pull their leathers out for and to rock out to, an in-your-face, immediate impact was needed and with this unneccessary padding, the might of GnR gets somewhat lost in the shuffle.
lunedì 20 ottobre 2008
CI SIAMOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!
Ragazzi, stavolta è vero al 99,9%, tra poco più di un mese BestBuy inizierà a vendere "Chinese Democracy". A tal proposito, abbiamo già la tracklist:
01. Chinese Democracy
02. Shackler's Revenge
03. Better
04. Street Of Dreams (The Blues?!?)
05. If The World
06. There Was A Time
07. Catcher N' The Rye
08. Scraped
09. Riad N' The Bedouins
10. Sorry
11. I.R.S.
12. Madagascar
13. This I Love
14. Prostitute
01. Chinese Democracy
02. Shackler's Revenge
03. Better
04. Street Of Dreams (The Blues?!?)
05. If The World
06. There Was A Time
07. Catcher N' The Rye
08. Scraped
09. Riad N' The Bedouins
10. Sorry
11. I.R.S.
12. Madagascar
13. This I Love
14. Prostitute
martedì 30 settembre 2008
DATA DI USCITA PER "CHINESE DEMOCRACY"!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I miei problemi tecnici persistono, ma quest'oggi riesco ugualmente a poter postare qualche riga...
Giusto lo spazio x segnalare che il 25 NOVEMBRE sembra dover essere davvero quella di uscita di "Chinese Democracy"!!!!
Giusto lo spazio x segnalare che il 25 NOVEMBRE sembra dover essere davvero quella di uscita di "Chinese Democracy"!!!!
lunedì 29 settembre 2008
PROBLEMI TECNICI
Ciao a tutti!
Il mio modem ADSL è andato a meretrici, per cui sono senza connessione Internet. La saltuaria possibilità di collegamento dalla biblioteca pubblica mi consente di farvi sapere ciò e dirvi che, non appena arriverà il già ordinato modem nuovo, tornerò operativo.
Scusate per l'assenza.
Federico Zuliani
Il mio modem ADSL è andato a meretrici, per cui sono senza connessione Internet. La saltuaria possibilità di collegamento dalla biblioteca pubblica mi consente di farvi sapere ciò e dirvi che, non appena arriverà il già ordinato modem nuovo, tornerò operativo.
Scusate per l'assenza.
Federico Zuliani
lunedì 8 settembre 2008
Mtv VMA: No Axl, Si Slash...
La speranza era tanta, anche se il "pissi pissi" non era "caldo" come nell'ormai lontano 2002, quando a fine show partirono le note di "Jungle" ed un brivido mi percorse la schiena...
Stavolta il sogno era destinato a rimanere tale, ma qualcosa ce lo aveva detto fin da subito...
Nel pre-show, infatti, eccoti l'inquadratura di Slash e signora che posano x i fotografi...
Primo pensiero?!? Se c'è Slash, col caxxo che ci sarà Axl...
E infatti...
Britney Spears e altre gnocche a volontà, artisti rap e R&B in tutte le salse, ma dei Guns N' Roses manco a parlarne...
Accontentiamoci di Mr. Hudson che premia i Linkin Park per il "Best Rock Video"...
A proposito di Slash, il chitarrista ha rivelato di aver ceduto alla tentazione e, dopo aver rifiutato per molto tempo di ascoltare i vari leaks, ha inserito nello stereo della sua auto una copia di "Chinese Demoacracy" che qualcuno gli ha passato...
Ha detto che, pur trattandosi di un'opera molto diversa da quello che erano i Guns originali (sai che scoperta...), parla di un buon lavoro da parte di Axl...
Se lo facessero ascoltare anche a noi comuni mortali...
Ah, su Antiquet trovate il modo per dare una mano a livello economico a quel povero cristo che hanno messo in galera per i leaks...AIUTIAMOLO!!!
Stavolta il sogno era destinato a rimanere tale, ma qualcosa ce lo aveva detto fin da subito...
Nel pre-show, infatti, eccoti l'inquadratura di Slash e signora che posano x i fotografi...
Primo pensiero?!? Se c'è Slash, col caxxo che ci sarà Axl...
E infatti...
Britney Spears e altre gnocche a volontà, artisti rap e R&B in tutte le salse, ma dei Guns N' Roses manco a parlarne...
Accontentiamoci di Mr. Hudson che premia i Linkin Park per il "Best Rock Video"...
A proposito di Slash, il chitarrista ha rivelato di aver ceduto alla tentazione e, dopo aver rifiutato per molto tempo di ascoltare i vari leaks, ha inserito nello stereo della sua auto una copia di "Chinese Demoacracy" che qualcuno gli ha passato...
Ha detto che, pur trattandosi di un'opera molto diversa da quello che erano i Guns originali (sai che scoperta...), parla di un buon lavoro da parte di Axl...
Se lo facessero ascoltare anche a noi comuni mortali...
Ah, su Antiquet trovate il modo per dare una mano a livello economico a quel povero cristo che hanno messo in galera per i leaks...AIUTIAMOLO!!!
venerdì 22 agosto 2008
The "Chinese Democracy"'s Leaks Review
Qualcuno sostiene che recensire dei leaks sia folle e privo di senso...
A livello "filosofico" forse non hanno tutti i torti, ma per la quasi totalità dei leaks si tratta di qualcosa ormai vicinissimo al prodotto finale, se nn proprio questo.
Ecco quindi la mia personalissima recensione di "Chinese Democracy" così come lo conosciamo ora (secondo una tracklist uscita tempo fa), con l'aggiunta di qualche "bonus track"...
CHINESE DEMOCRACY
La title track e, teoricamente, la traccia che aprirà l'album. L'intro "etnico" fa da tappeto rosso per delle lancinanti schitarrate che, con le dovute proporzioni, rimandano a quelle di "Welcome To The Jungle", non a caso l'apertura di "Appetite For Destruction"...
Molti hanno definito CD "post-grunge" o "industrial", ma per quanto mi riguarda lo ritengo un brano hard-rock "geneticamente modificato" con elementi "attuali", con un testo criptico che fa in parte riferimento alla Cina, in parte più genericamente all'oppressione del Potere e alla volontà insita nella natura umana di conquistarlo. Come dargli torto?!
IRS
L'IRS è l'equivalente USA di un ufficio indagini tributarie, e viene elencato nella canzone insieme al Presidente, l'FBI e un'agenzia investigativa. Tutta gente che Axl sostiene di dover chiamare, di dover fare di una diatriba un caso federale. Potrebbe riguardare i suoi guai giudiziari con Stephanie Seymour, oppure con gli ex Gunners o entrambi.
Il brano parte lento, su una base di chitarre acustiche, per sfociare poi in un groove ritmato ed ipnotico che ti conquista. Assoli di chitarra "bizzarri" arricchiscono la canzone di quel tocco "nuovo" che Axl ha avuto da subito intenzione di imprimere al sound della band. Con ottimi risultati...
BETTER
Qualcuno ha detto che questa canzone parte come un brano di Rhianna...in verità, dopo qualche secondo di cantilena filtrata, si sfocia subito in un rock sostenuto, fatto di assoli intriganti, cambi di ritmo, frenate improvvise e ripartenze. Un brano ricco, ma non saturo e quindi molto godibile. Robin Finck sugli scudi, alla faccia di chi lo massacra a prescindere nei vari forum...
MADAGASCAR
Una power ballad intensa, sia nella parte musicale che in quella lirica. Il testo parla infatti di una persona abbandonata da chi gli era vicino (la Seymour? la band? Entrambi?), ma non chiede vendetta, ma di capire e perdonare chi ha compiuto il torto. Un Axl dai buoni sentimenti, una quasi rarità. Musicalmente, l'incipit di organo è grandioso, come i contrappunti di chitarra. La chicca, nella fase centrale, è il collage di frasi, il cui trave portante è il discorso "I Have A Dream" di Martin Luther King. Se il disco uscisse a breve, Obama potrebbe farci un pensierino come jingle delle presidenziali...
THE BLUES
Ballatona strappalacrime, nel segno delle varie "November Rain", "Estranged" e così via. Bellissimo l'assolo di chitarra, ai livelli del miglior Slash. Peccato che, rispetto alla versione di inizio millennio, sia stato eliminato il fraseggio di chitarra all'inizio, in favore della semplice accoppiata voce/piano, anche se questa dà un ancora maggiore senso "di tristezza", addattissimo per la canzone.
IF THE WORLD
Loops, chitarre spagnoleggianti, ma anche un assolo "da paura", per una canzone sicuramente strana per i fans di vecchia data
THERE WAS A TIME
Qui si rasenta il capolavoro! Se solo il ritornello fosse più incisivo, avremmo una delle canzoni più grandi di sempre. Tolto ciò, ci troviamo di fronte ad un brano complesso, con strofa lunga fatta a cambi di ritmo e un ritornello corto. Un bridge che funziona alla perfezione e, soprattutto, una coda da 10 e lode, con la chitarra di Finck che sembra ricalcare perfettamente la voce di Axl, prima di lanciarsi in un cosmico assolo che ti avvolge e non ti lascia più...FAVOLOSA!
CHICKEN DINNER
Dovrebbe trattarsi di "Shackler's Revenge", la canzone della band che apparirà sul gioco "Rock Band 2". Per molti significa che sarà il singolo di lancio, ma non è detto affatto. La canzone, secondo me, è stata scelta espressamente per il gioco, essendo abbastanza "tecnologica" e avendo un assolo che spakka per far divertire chi se ne sta con la consolle in mano.
Ciò detto, il brano è carino, anche se non pare all'altezza di molti dei brani leakati in precedenza...
UNTITLED SONG
Per quanto mi riguarda, una delle più belle canzoni mai scritte da Axl, specialmente per quanto riguarda il testo malinconico e straziante. Che poi si intitoli "This I Love", "Prostitute", "Fortune And Fame/Shame" o che altro, DEVE trovar posto in questo disco o in quelli che dovrebbero seguirlo a ruota, secondo quanto detto da Axl e stesso ed in maniera più dettagliata dal suo sodale Sebastian Bach. Brano che parte lento e soffice, per aumentare poi il ritmo e sfociare in un energico rock alimentato da schitarrate da brividi. Bellissima!
RIHAD & THE BEDOUINS
Apparsa dal vivo fin dalle primissime esibizioni dei brancaleoneschi Gunners del Terzo Millennio, si giocava la palma di "peggior cosa nuova" dei GN'R con Silkworms, e anche nella gara assoluta con "My World" (da UYI II) stava piazzata bene. Invece, nella serie di leaks apparsi su Antiquet, ecco spuntarne la versione studio, col brano che acquista tutto un altro spessore. Ritmo trascinante, chitarre che ci danno dentro e cori al punto giusto. Non varrà una "TWAT" o "The Blues", ma non è certo un brano da buttar via.
CATCHER IN THE RYE
Secondo una mia teoria, l'unico leak uscito "per caso". Tutti gli altri, infatti, sono stati suonati live prima o dopo la loro apparizione in rete, e sono inoltre usciti in più versioni, escludendo ovviamente l'ultima infornata (però "Rhiad" era già apparsa dal vivo, come spiegato sopra).
Si tratta della classica "ballata alla Axl", ossia col pianoforte a fare da traino e con un assolo magico che spunta a metà canzone. Autore della "schitarrata" e addirittura Brian May dei Queen, che tira fuori qualcosa che è una perfetta fusione tra il suo stile (chiaramente) e quello di Slash. Ve ne fosse un secondo (come in "November Rain"), il brano toccherebbe vette magiche (ed il mio "remix" lo dimostra...). Tanto più che 5-6 anni fa veniva dato come singolo apripista del nuovo disco, mentre ora appare più fuori che dentro dalla tracklist...
OH MY GOD
Questa è l'unica cosa ufficiale dei nuovi Guns apparsa dai tempi di "Symphathy For The Devil". La si sente infatti nei titoli di coda del film "End Of Days/Giorni Contatti" con Arnold Schwarzenegger. Era il 1999 e la canzone stupì negativamente per il suo essere un pastiche techno-industrial più vicino a certi lavori di NIN, Marilyn Manson e simili, piuttosto che ad un classico brando targato GN'R, fosse un hard rock venato di blues o una ballata al pianoforte con degli assoli killer. D'altra parte in questo periodo Axl è attiratissimo dalla musica "sperimentale", tanto da esser visto assistere ad un concerto dei Tool ed esser noto per l'utilizzo in studio di computers, Pro Tools e sintetizzatori di vario genere.
Il brano, nonostante tutti i suoni "sintetici", è cmq un pezzo rock con un discreto tiro, con assoli interessanti ed un testo ficcante come Axl sa fare.
Si vociferava ne fosse stata in seguito registrata una versione più rock e meno "computerizzata", ma nn se n'è saputo più nulla e cmq il brano non dovrebbe apparire sul disco.
SILKWORMS
Brano sentito solo dal vivo, e facente parte del filone "techno" del gruppo. Logico quindi che live possa aver difficoltà a rendere, ma la controprova non c'è. Il brano è stato composto dai due tastieristi del gruppo, il vecchio sodale di Axl, Dizzy Reed e l'esperto di "macchine infernali" Chris Pitman.
Come per "OMG", il testo è "cattivo", quasi che nel periodo in cui sono state composte le due canzoni, vi fosse un "disegno" sul tipo di lyrics da abbinare ad un certo tipo di brani.
Alcuni remix fatti dai fans in giro per la Rete, con l'aggiunta di qualche loop ed una parziale pulizia dei rumori di fondo, ha reso più onore ad un brano cmq davvero strano, con una partenza lenta e vagamente mistica, che sfocia però poi in un ritmo sostenuto con un tappeto "elettronico" e chitarristico molto pastoso.
Da rivedere, potrebbe sorprendere in meglio come "Rhiad"...
CHECKMATE
Per la maggioranza dei fans dei vari forum, questo frammento apparso in una versione da 16 secondi e in una da 26, è un fake.
Io però faccio parte della minoranza che la ritiene reale, dato che la voce sembra proprio quella di Axl, e molto in forma anche!
La batteria pesta, il brano sembra avere davvero un bel tiro. Chissà se scopriremo la verità prima o poi...
A livello "filosofico" forse non hanno tutti i torti, ma per la quasi totalità dei leaks si tratta di qualcosa ormai vicinissimo al prodotto finale, se nn proprio questo.
Ecco quindi la mia personalissima recensione di "Chinese Democracy" così come lo conosciamo ora (secondo una tracklist uscita tempo fa), con l'aggiunta di qualche "bonus track"...
CHINESE DEMOCRACY
La title track e, teoricamente, la traccia che aprirà l'album. L'intro "etnico" fa da tappeto rosso per delle lancinanti schitarrate che, con le dovute proporzioni, rimandano a quelle di "Welcome To The Jungle", non a caso l'apertura di "Appetite For Destruction"...
Molti hanno definito CD "post-grunge" o "industrial", ma per quanto mi riguarda lo ritengo un brano hard-rock "geneticamente modificato" con elementi "attuali", con un testo criptico che fa in parte riferimento alla Cina, in parte più genericamente all'oppressione del Potere e alla volontà insita nella natura umana di conquistarlo. Come dargli torto?!
IRS
L'IRS è l'equivalente USA di un ufficio indagini tributarie, e viene elencato nella canzone insieme al Presidente, l'FBI e un'agenzia investigativa. Tutta gente che Axl sostiene di dover chiamare, di dover fare di una diatriba un caso federale. Potrebbe riguardare i suoi guai giudiziari con Stephanie Seymour, oppure con gli ex Gunners o entrambi.
Il brano parte lento, su una base di chitarre acustiche, per sfociare poi in un groove ritmato ed ipnotico che ti conquista. Assoli di chitarra "bizzarri" arricchiscono la canzone di quel tocco "nuovo" che Axl ha avuto da subito intenzione di imprimere al sound della band. Con ottimi risultati...
BETTER
Qualcuno ha detto che questa canzone parte come un brano di Rhianna...in verità, dopo qualche secondo di cantilena filtrata, si sfocia subito in un rock sostenuto, fatto di assoli intriganti, cambi di ritmo, frenate improvvise e ripartenze. Un brano ricco, ma non saturo e quindi molto godibile. Robin Finck sugli scudi, alla faccia di chi lo massacra a prescindere nei vari forum...
MADAGASCAR
Una power ballad intensa, sia nella parte musicale che in quella lirica. Il testo parla infatti di una persona abbandonata da chi gli era vicino (la Seymour? la band? Entrambi?), ma non chiede vendetta, ma di capire e perdonare chi ha compiuto il torto. Un Axl dai buoni sentimenti, una quasi rarità. Musicalmente, l'incipit di organo è grandioso, come i contrappunti di chitarra. La chicca, nella fase centrale, è il collage di frasi, il cui trave portante è il discorso "I Have A Dream" di Martin Luther King. Se il disco uscisse a breve, Obama potrebbe farci un pensierino come jingle delle presidenziali...
THE BLUES
Ballatona strappalacrime, nel segno delle varie "November Rain", "Estranged" e così via. Bellissimo l'assolo di chitarra, ai livelli del miglior Slash. Peccato che, rispetto alla versione di inizio millennio, sia stato eliminato il fraseggio di chitarra all'inizio, in favore della semplice accoppiata voce/piano, anche se questa dà un ancora maggiore senso "di tristezza", addattissimo per la canzone.
IF THE WORLD
Loops, chitarre spagnoleggianti, ma anche un assolo "da paura", per una canzone sicuramente strana per i fans di vecchia data
THERE WAS A TIME
Qui si rasenta il capolavoro! Se solo il ritornello fosse più incisivo, avremmo una delle canzoni più grandi di sempre. Tolto ciò, ci troviamo di fronte ad un brano complesso, con strofa lunga fatta a cambi di ritmo e un ritornello corto. Un bridge che funziona alla perfezione e, soprattutto, una coda da 10 e lode, con la chitarra di Finck che sembra ricalcare perfettamente la voce di Axl, prima di lanciarsi in un cosmico assolo che ti avvolge e non ti lascia più...FAVOLOSA!
CHICKEN DINNER
Dovrebbe trattarsi di "Shackler's Revenge", la canzone della band che apparirà sul gioco "Rock Band 2". Per molti significa che sarà il singolo di lancio, ma non è detto affatto. La canzone, secondo me, è stata scelta espressamente per il gioco, essendo abbastanza "tecnologica" e avendo un assolo che spakka per far divertire chi se ne sta con la consolle in mano.
Ciò detto, il brano è carino, anche se non pare all'altezza di molti dei brani leakati in precedenza...
UNTITLED SONG
Per quanto mi riguarda, una delle più belle canzoni mai scritte da Axl, specialmente per quanto riguarda il testo malinconico e straziante. Che poi si intitoli "This I Love", "Prostitute", "Fortune And Fame/Shame" o che altro, DEVE trovar posto in questo disco o in quelli che dovrebbero seguirlo a ruota, secondo quanto detto da Axl e stesso ed in maniera più dettagliata dal suo sodale Sebastian Bach. Brano che parte lento e soffice, per aumentare poi il ritmo e sfociare in un energico rock alimentato da schitarrate da brividi. Bellissima!
RIHAD & THE BEDOUINS
Apparsa dal vivo fin dalle primissime esibizioni dei brancaleoneschi Gunners del Terzo Millennio, si giocava la palma di "peggior cosa nuova" dei GN'R con Silkworms, e anche nella gara assoluta con "My World" (da UYI II) stava piazzata bene. Invece, nella serie di leaks apparsi su Antiquet, ecco spuntarne la versione studio, col brano che acquista tutto un altro spessore. Ritmo trascinante, chitarre che ci danno dentro e cori al punto giusto. Non varrà una "TWAT" o "The Blues", ma non è certo un brano da buttar via.
CATCHER IN THE RYE
Secondo una mia teoria, l'unico leak uscito "per caso". Tutti gli altri, infatti, sono stati suonati live prima o dopo la loro apparizione in rete, e sono inoltre usciti in più versioni, escludendo ovviamente l'ultima infornata (però "Rhiad" era già apparsa dal vivo, come spiegato sopra).
Si tratta della classica "ballata alla Axl", ossia col pianoforte a fare da traino e con un assolo magico che spunta a metà canzone. Autore della "schitarrata" e addirittura Brian May dei Queen, che tira fuori qualcosa che è una perfetta fusione tra il suo stile (chiaramente) e quello di Slash. Ve ne fosse un secondo (come in "November Rain"), il brano toccherebbe vette magiche (ed il mio "remix" lo dimostra...). Tanto più che 5-6 anni fa veniva dato come singolo apripista del nuovo disco, mentre ora appare più fuori che dentro dalla tracklist...
OH MY GOD
Questa è l'unica cosa ufficiale dei nuovi Guns apparsa dai tempi di "Symphathy For The Devil". La si sente infatti nei titoli di coda del film "End Of Days/Giorni Contatti" con Arnold Schwarzenegger. Era il 1999 e la canzone stupì negativamente per il suo essere un pastiche techno-industrial più vicino a certi lavori di NIN, Marilyn Manson e simili, piuttosto che ad un classico brando targato GN'R, fosse un hard rock venato di blues o una ballata al pianoforte con degli assoli killer. D'altra parte in questo periodo Axl è attiratissimo dalla musica "sperimentale", tanto da esser visto assistere ad un concerto dei Tool ed esser noto per l'utilizzo in studio di computers, Pro Tools e sintetizzatori di vario genere.
Il brano, nonostante tutti i suoni "sintetici", è cmq un pezzo rock con un discreto tiro, con assoli interessanti ed un testo ficcante come Axl sa fare.
Si vociferava ne fosse stata in seguito registrata una versione più rock e meno "computerizzata", ma nn se n'è saputo più nulla e cmq il brano non dovrebbe apparire sul disco.
SILKWORMS
Brano sentito solo dal vivo, e facente parte del filone "techno" del gruppo. Logico quindi che live possa aver difficoltà a rendere, ma la controprova non c'è. Il brano è stato composto dai due tastieristi del gruppo, il vecchio sodale di Axl, Dizzy Reed e l'esperto di "macchine infernali" Chris Pitman.
Come per "OMG", il testo è "cattivo", quasi che nel periodo in cui sono state composte le due canzoni, vi fosse un "disegno" sul tipo di lyrics da abbinare ad un certo tipo di brani.
Alcuni remix fatti dai fans in giro per la Rete, con l'aggiunta di qualche loop ed una parziale pulizia dei rumori di fondo, ha reso più onore ad un brano cmq davvero strano, con una partenza lenta e vagamente mistica, che sfocia però poi in un ritmo sostenuto con un tappeto "elettronico" e chitarristico molto pastoso.
Da rivedere, potrebbe sorprendere in meglio come "Rhiad"...
CHECKMATE
Per la maggioranza dei fans dei vari forum, questo frammento apparso in una versione da 16 secondi e in una da 26, è un fake.
Io però faccio parte della minoranza che la ritiene reale, dato che la voce sembra proprio quella di Axl, e molto in forma anche!
La batteria pesta, il brano sembra avere davvero un bel tiro. Chissà se scopriremo la verità prima o poi...
lunedì 18 agosto 2008
venerdì 15 agosto 2008
mercoledì 23 luglio 2008
"Sweet Child O'Mine" a Studio Aperto!!!
Italia Uno, edizione delle 12.25 di Studio Aperto. Nella seconda parte del tg, c'è un servizio sui "pentiti da tatuaggi". Parte il servizio con un braccio "addobbato" e, contestualmente, un intro di chitarra davvero familiare...
Butto l'occhio al cellulare, dato ke quel suono è identico alla mia suoneria, ma nn lampeggia...
Non ho sentito male, allora, viene proprio dalla tv!
Horns up, headbanging e mia nonna ke mi guarda stranita mentre trascuro il mio panino x lasciarmi andare al sound di "Sweet Child O'Mine"...
Da raccontare...
Butto l'occhio al cellulare, dato ke quel suono è identico alla mia suoneria, ma nn lampeggia...
Non ho sentito male, allora, viene proprio dalla tv!
Horns up, headbanging e mia nonna ke mi guarda stranita mentre trascuro il mio panino x lasciarmi andare al sound di "Sweet Child O'Mine"...
Da raccontare...
giovedì 17 luglio 2008
Happy Birthday Mr. Zulie!!!
Il blog è il mio, x cui gli auguri me li faccio da solo... ;)
There's a lot goin' on!
There's a lot goin' on!
mercoledì 16 luglio 2008
Schlacker's Revenge!!!
E' ufficiale!
I Guns N' Roses appariranno nella colonna sonora del videogame "Rock Band 2" con una nuova traccia, "Schlacker's Revenge", un'anticipazione del stavolta forse davvero imminente "Chinese Democracy"...
I Guns N' Roses appariranno nella colonna sonora del videogame "Rock Band 2" con una nuova traccia, "Schlacker's Revenge", un'anticipazione del stavolta forse davvero imminente "Chinese Democracy"...
martedì 8 luglio 2008
giovedì 3 aprile 2008
mercoledì 6 febbraio 2008
Happy Birthday Mr. Rose!!!
Momento di compleanni in "casa" Guns N' Roses...dopo quello dello storico (ex) bassista Duff, oggi è il giorno del signor Guns N' Roses in persona, W. AXL ROSE!!!
X lo zio Axl sono 46, e quando sono nati i GN'R ne aveva esattamente la metà. Il nostro ha quindi passato metà della sua vita nella/x la band, e speriamo che il suo regalo sia "Chinese Democracy", x noi da parte sua e dalla casa discografica x lui...
X lo zio Axl sono 46, e quando sono nati i GN'R ne aveva esattamente la metà. Il nostro ha quindi passato metà della sua vita nella/x la band, e speriamo che il suo regalo sia "Chinese Democracy", x noi da parte sua e dalla casa discografica x lui...
martedì 5 febbraio 2008
Happy Birthday Mr. McKagan!!!
Oggi è il 43° compleanno dell'ex "Sumo Wrestler Bear" Duff "Rose" McKagan, bassista dei Velvet Revolver e, ovviamente ex dei Guns N' Roses. TANTI AUGURI!!!
domenica 20 gennaio 2008
Load up on Guns!
Cari amici, benvenuti su GN'R Italy, il blog dedicato ai Guns N' Roses! Enjoy and rock on!
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