Guns ‘n’ Roses Storms Back To Relevance With ‘Chinese Democracy’
First the bad news: Chinese Democracy is not the heavy metal sonic assault suggested by the early release of the title track. On the other hand, it very well may be the best album of the year.
After a rock band becomes a major success, they’re really in a ‘no win’ position. If they try to break new artistic ground, exploring different sounds or influences, they’ll invariably hear complaints that they were better the way they ‘used to be’. If they keep doing things the same way, a band risks losing any sort of artistic relevance and becoming a ‘nostalgia act’. Some bands try to stay innovative for awhile, but eventually assume the role of a ‘nostalgia act’ due to the financial upside that sometimes results.
Axl Rose could have taken the same route with Guns n Roses. All he needed to do was patch things up with former lead guitarist Slash and the two of them and whatever supporting players they recruited could have toured forever playing the old songs in the old way and make a ton of money along the way. To some extent, Slash has chosen this route with his band Velvet Revolver. They play similar blues based hard rock to vintage GnR, and brought in former Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland on vocals (who sounded almost just like Axl on a number of the early STP songs) Never mind the fact that everything Velvet Revolver has ever recorded sounds the same, or that the band members are all well in their 40s and a little old to be doing the rock n roll gypsy routine.
Axl refused to play the nostalgia game. He deserves credit for this, but he doesnt have much of a knack for self promotion or media spin. For that reason, there are plenty of people including media and critics that have predisposed to hating this album before it was released or even having heard any of it.
Many albums are fairly straightforward and are easy to figure out with a couple of listens. They fit a certain formula, with a power ballad, a hit single, a filler song, etc. Others evolve and change with repeated listening”different songs become your favorites, you notice new things about ones you thought you knew well and most significantly songs that you glossed over the first time around start to grow on you.
On Chinese Democracy thats definitely the case”the best example being the song Better. Axl claims that he doesnt try to write hit singles and thats probably the case, but in addition to being an impressive tour de force for Robin Finck on guitar it may be the catchiest pop song since The Killers first album.
One of the real triumphs of Chinese Democracy is the difficulty that a listener has in pigeonholing the songs. There’s definitely a lot of the piano based material first heard on the ‘Use Your Illusion’ releases but overall its evident that the band is breaking entirely new musical ground and even they don’t really know where they’ll end up. It’s very unpredictable and can be hard for a long time fan to wrap their head around, but once that happens its a very exciting sound.
The only real liability of ‘Chinese Democracy’ is that a few songs have been watered down by overproduction”biggest case in point Madagascar which the band has been playing live for the better part of this decade. The album version doesn’t quite have the edge or raw emotion that was on display when played live.
Thats a very small complaint about what is overall an amazing album. Theres nothing nostalgic about ‘Chinese Democracy., just the sound of a great band breaking new ground.
Ross Everett is a experienced freelance writer specializing in travel, poker and sports handicapping. He is a consulting handicapper for Anatta Sports where he is responsible for providing daily free sports picks. In his spare time he enjoys fine dining, fencing and deep sea diving. He lives in Southern Nevada with four dogs and a pet coyote.
