Are you all ready for this album to drop after 15 years in the making? I've seen it advertised on tv as coming out on 11/23? I don't know about you guys but i'm scared. Why is it coming out now and what are we supposed to do? I feel like I need to pack some canned goods and some clothes and hide out somewhere. but seriously, are you guys excited about this? Will this be the biggest album since Thriller?

dancerella said:

Its just a Rock Record, it really isnt anything special. Its a good album dont get me wrong, but GnR and that "enigma" is long gone, the mystery around this album is that of the mystery around the "black album", the "black albums" time to be released was 1988, not 1995, and the same pretty much goes for this album just different years. Its not "dated" because that term is so stupid and overused that people who use it actually think they are making a point, but this record missed its calling, but for the diehards it will be a "finally" but for others, just a rock record.

lastdecember said:

interesting. so it's not a masterpiece??

dancerella said:

I mean even if it was you cant tell because the whole "enigma" of the record has overshadowed any real feeling about the record. Some people are gonna say, i waited all this time for this shit, and others will say its a masterpiece, and honestly its just a record. And i think Axl at this point just let it go because there really wasnt anything else to do with it, even the "enigma" was dieing.
[Edited 11/11/08 15:32pm]

dancerella said:

What I've heard was no better than other Guns 'n' Roses. Working on something forever doesn't necessarily make it better.

But it sounded good, though my tolerance for his voice has waned to some degree.

But most of all it's not Guns 'n' Roses, it's Axl Rose.

If He, Slash, Duff, Izzy, and whoever on drums had worked on it for this long I might be more intrigued, but it's just the obsessive project of a mentally unstable (if talented) whiny balladeer.

Honestly i like Guns, but they are nothing more than what Nirvana is, what Lauryn Hill is etc..and that is a one album wonder, with alot of "talk" that is bigger than what they do. And thats not saying they arent talented or good or even great, but when you become all about the "talk" you really are just bigger in "talk" than on record.

lastdecember said:

I feel like what you are saying is mostly true of Lauren and and definitely Nirvana who are so damn blown out of proportion but with Axl I feel he might really be a genuis. I have a feeling though that I will be let down by this album because how could be it live up to the myth that has been created? Overall I guess i'm just happy to hear new material from him. I wish it was a full renunion by G N'R though!

dancerella said:

really? wow. I love Appetite and think Lies & Use Your Illusion were very good. But i haven't seen anything to indicate to me that Axl alone is anything beyond fairly talented.

I do like what I've heard of the new stuff, but I wonder what songs make you think he could be a genius.

NDRU said:

The entire appetite album!

NDRU said:

Yeah, I just recently became aware of this.



Sorry, but that's not a Guns 'n' Roses album.

i think GNR should tour with the smashing pumpkins and they can call it the phantom limbs tour.

Anxiety said:

You mean without Axl Rose and Billy Corgan, right?

PurpleJedi said:

well, okay, but if that happened then axl and billy would just go on tour anyway as THE REAL GUNS'N'ROSES and THE REAL SMASHING PUMPKINS.

I think everyone is numb to the fact that it will be released.. i think the after effect will be "oh, okay.. who gives a fuck"

I've heard a handful of cuts and think it's a solid offering... although, who knows how accepting or concerned the big fans of GNR will be?

Did Axl even manage to cobble together tracks that have the same personnel on them?

Anxiety said:

and maybe the REAL STONE TEMPLE PILOTS can open for them??? I mean, without Scott Wieland that is.....

dancerella said:

Yeah, it's a classic, but that was a band effort. Specifically what of Axl's contributions?

mm i remember rolling stone s review of the leaked tracks. but i listend too them and none of then appeal to me . not that i am a fan of theirs

this band has ceased to be relevant...the songs are boring...

Album Review
RollingStone.com
November 10, 2008


Let's get right to it: The first Guns n' Roses album of new, original songs since the first Bush administration is a great, audacious, unhinged and uncompromising hard-rock record. In other words, it sounds a lot like the Guns n' Roses you know.

At times, it's the clenched-fist five that made 1987's perfect storm, Appetite for Destruction; more often, it's the one sprawled across the maxed-out CDs of 1991's Use Your Illusion I and II, but here compressed into a convulsive single disc of supershred guitars, orchestral fanfares, hip-hop electronics, metallic tabernacle choirs and Axl Rose's still-virile, rusted-siren singing.

If Rose ever had a moment's doubt or repentance over what Chinese Democracy has cost him in time (13 years), money (14 studios are listed in the credits) and body count — including the exit of every other founding member of the band — he left no room for it in these 14 songs. "I bet you think I'm doin' this all for my health," Rose cracks through the saturation-bombing guitars in "I.R.S.," one of several glancing references on the album to what he knows a lot of people think of him: that Rose, now 46, has spent the last third of his life running off the rails, in half-light. But when he snaps, "All things are possible/I am unstoppable," in the thumper "Scraped," that's not loony hubris — just a good old rock & roll "fuck you," the kind that made him and the old band hot and famous in the first place.

Something else Rose broadcasts over and over on Chinese Democracy: Restraint is for suckers. There is plenty of familiar guitar firepower — the stabbing-dagger lick that opens the first track, "Chinese Democracy," the sand-devil fuzz in "Riad N' the Bedouins" and the looping squeals over the grand anguish of "Street of Dreams."

But what Slash and Izzy Stradlin used to do with two guitars now takes a wall of 'em. On some tracks, Rose has up to five guys — Robin Finck, Buckethead, Paul Tobias, Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal and Richard Fortus — riffing and soloing in broad, saw-toothed blurs.

And that's no drag. I still think the wild, superstuffed "Oh My God" — the early Chinese Democracy track wasted on the 1999 End of Days soundtrack — beats everything on Guns n' Roses' 1993 covers album, The Spaghetti Incident?

Most of these songs also go through multiple U-turns in personality, as if Rose kept trying new approaches to a hook or a bridge and then decided, "What the hell, they're all cool." "Better" starts with what sounds like hip-hop voicemail — severely pinched guitar, drum machine and a near-falsetto Rose ("No one ever told me when/I was alone/They just thought I'd know better") — before blowing up into vintage Sunset Strip wallop.

"If the World" has Buckethead plucking acoustic Spanish guitar over a blaxploitation-film groove, while Rose shows that he still holds a long-breath vowel — part torture victim, part screaming jet — like no other rock singer.

And there is so much going on in "There Was a Time" — strings and Mellotron, a full-strength choir and Rose's overdubbed sour-growl harmonies, wah-wah guitar and a false ending (more choir) — that it's easy to believe Rose spent most of the past decade on that arrangement alone. But it is never a mess, more like a loud mass of bad memories and hard lessons.

In the first lines, Rose goes back to a beginning much like his own — "Broken glass and cigarettes/ Writin' on the wall/It was a bargain for the summer/An' I thought I had it all" — then piles on the wreckage along with the orchestra and guitars. By the end, it's one big melt of missing and kiss-off ("If I could go back in time . . . But I don't want to know it now"). If this is the Guns n' Roses that Rose kept hearing in his head all this time, it is obvious why two guitars, bass and drums were never going to be enough.

It is plain, too, that he thinks this Guns n' Roses is a band, as much as the one that recorded "Welcome to the Jungle," "Sweet Child O' Mine," "Used to Love Her" and "Civil War." The voluminous credits that come with Chinese Democracy certainly give detailed credit where it is due. My favorite: "Initial arrangement suggestions: Youth on 'Madagascar."

Rose takes the big one — "Lyrics N' Melodies by Axl Rose" — but shares full-song bylines with other players on all but one track. Bassist Tommy Stinson plays on nearly every song, and keyboardist Dizzy Reed, the only survivor from the Illusion lineup, does the Elton John-style piano honors on "Street of Dreams."

But Rose still sings a lot about the power of sheer, solitary will even when he throws himself into a bigger fight, like "Chinese Democracy." In "Madagascar," which Rose has played live for several years now, he samples both Dr. Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech and dialogue from Cool Hand Luke. And at the end of the album, on the bluntly titled "Prostitute," Rose veers from an almost conversational tenor, over a ticking-bomb shuffle, to five-guitar barrage, orchestral lightning and righteous howl: "Ask yourself/Why I would choose/To prostitute myself/To live with fortune and shame." To him, the long march to Chinese Democracy was not about paranoia and control. It was about saying "I won't" when everyone else insisted, "You must."

You may debate whether any rock record is worth that extreme self-indulgence. Actually, the most rock & roll thing about Chinese Democracy is he doesn't care if you do.


Tracks:

"Chinese Democracy"
"Scraped"
"Shackler's Revenge"
"Street Of Dreams"
"If The World"
"Better"
"This I Love"
"There Was A Time"
"Riad N' The Bedovins"
"Sorry"
"I.R.S."
"Catcher"
"Madagascar"
"Prostitute"

I dunno, I'm looking forward to it.

[rant] I'd like to add that being 'relevant' is complete BS of an argument to not listen to some music.

Prince wasn't relevant in the late 90s/early 2000s, but that's when I discovered him and he became relevant to me.

I couldn't care less about who the big corporate music purveyors are selling. Like Barry White said, they can make any song a number one hit with their PR machine: their cliques and connections to big media outlets.

Fuck them. and fuck listening to music just because some useful idiots decide to make them relevant.

I'm saying this as someone who used to care about critics and trends.



Use these shades to see through the B.S.[/rant]

[Edited 11/12/08 20:29pm]
[Edited 11/12/08 20:31pm]

I've heard all of the tracks from the album in various stages of completion, and it's great. There are a few bummers (the first two tracks leave much to be desired, and one of 'em is the lead single), but many of the songs are just fantastic.

It's ambitious and unique in the way that mainstream rock albums haven't been for a long time. For that much, I give Axl and Co. much credit.

If anything, after the album's released, check out "Catcher in the Rye" and "Prostitute" in particular - easily my two favorite cuts on the album. The final version of CITR is mindboggling compared to the softer, more ethereal demo that's been around for a couple years.
[Edited 11/12/08 22:09pm]

He stands to make a lot of money from this due to the hype. And it appears that it is a decent record, which is also kind of rare these days. I bet it goes to number one and then slowly fades away. He waited too long. But then again, he is filthy rich and has the time.

Haha!

Risico said:

agreed the project is the most ambitious for a rock , or any record in such a long long time.

yoshimaroka said:

At the end of the day relevance means; does the music hold up to the test of time that the first record did?

IMO, this doesn't and Axl and his new band can go fuck themselves in their ego hole that made this steaming pile of shit that took him 13 years to crap.

Slave2daGroove said:

Fair enough.


I'm excited now that it's only 9 days away

I don´t really get the hate that goes about for Axl
he´s got Character

I don´t think he´s just in it for the money. This makes him a bit less predcitable.

I´m trying to keep my expectations low
But I think it´ll be a great album.