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Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.
“All I’ve got is precious time,” Axl Rose snarls on Chinese Democracy’s title track, seemingly with a wink and a nod to the album’s infamous history. But Rose’s time can’t be that precious if this is the best he can do with his tyrannical grip on GNR. Almost every song on the album is the sonic equivalent of an M.C. Escher painting, leaving the listener unsure whether the next 16 measures will morph into nü-metal chug or an inverted staircase.
Yet Mr. Rose has few doubts about his own importance: he sees a kindred repressed artist in J.D. Salinger on “Catcher in the Rye,” and the bombastic sample of MLK on “Madagascar” is only slightly more brazen than the song’s reuse of the same snippet of Cool Hand Luke from Use Your Illusion II. The album’s closing half-hour chokes on a string of ballads; a maudlin last gasp tangled with five-guitar barrages.
“I bet you think I’m doing this for my health,” Rose quips defensively, overeager to play autobiographer. Too bad the epitaph’s already scrawled in Chinese Democracy’s anachronistic margins: a bottomless pit dug by disposable income, a persecution complex and egomania.
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'Its not AFD' - booooooooooring.
'He spent a lot of money on it' - booooring.
'It took a long time' - booooooring.
Maybe you should think for yourself, rather than reusing all the other quotes from other reviews.
GNR was never just the AFD sound. Go listen to UYI all the way through.
As for Chinese Democracy, I suspect history will remember the music longer than they'll remember your review.
'Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair' - I'm gonna go ahead and assume this was a comment about your own review.
This is almost a great album. If not for a couple over-produced songs, it would be great. He should also use less F words. Great music can stand up to anything without the need for profanity. Axl is what? 45 years old? leave the F words for the rebellious kids.
Having said that, it is still a very good album and it is great to hear Axl's voice again. I really hope that he has gotten this cd out of his system and puts a little less thought and just instinct into the next cd.
all reservations aside...i actually kind of like this album. say what you will about "it's not GNR...it's Axl" or whatever. i first listened to the album in its entirety on myspace last saturday before it was released. albeit on laptop speakers, i thought the songs sounded like garbage. i picked the album up the next day (sunday) at Best Buy. threw it in the car cd player (14 speaker Harmon Kardon system) and thought...hmmm...this isn't as bad as i thought. 10 listens later, i'm actually really liking it. i came at it with an open mind...obviously expecting a fail, but now pleasantly surprised. it's not the original members, but the core of the album has GNR sounds embedded everywhere. some of the new experimental shit is terrible, and most of the garbage is in the intros or first minute of the song, but once the songs get going, they sound nice. i'm just saying....listen to it a few times and see if it doesn't grow on you.
Why do people say they like this album? It obviously sucks. Maybe if you listen to 2 albums a year, you think it's good. If this was the first Guns album, absolutely no one would care.
This is by far the best album of 08. What do you have to pit it against? Coldplay? lol Nickelback lmao Kanye West ROTFL
Gimmie a break. It's the best thing I've heard since Back to Black