METAL EDGE Editor-In-Chief Phil Freeman reviews the long awaited new Guns N’ Roses album Axl Rose. The Phantom of the Sunset Strip. The Howard Hughes of hard rock. Mr. No-Show, Mr. Cancelled Tour, Mr. Last Band Member Standing. How did it come to this? His band’s debut album, Appetite For Destruction, was easily the greatest hard rock album of 1987, a blast of drugged-out ’70s nihilism and rage that offered the only suitable response to the glossy late ’80s hair metal scene. The Use Your Illusion albums felt patchy and overstuffed at the time, but in hindsight they seem like a necessary antidote to the then-ascendant grunge bands’ churlish substitution of sarcasm for inspiration, to their refusal to even acknowledge glory as a goal worth striving for. Next came a half-decent set of cover tunes, and then…15 years of silence, rumors, and lawsuits, interrupted only by a couple of tours, a weird, suspenseful MTV performance, and then, in the last year or so, Internet leaks of songs that were spun/dismissed by spokesmen as mere demos. Now, in 2008, the real thing – Chinese Democracy, here at last.
It’s illustrative to contrast CD with other long-awaited comebacks – Metallica back after five years, AC/DC after eight. Death Magnetic was a crushing return to form, a synthesis of Metallica’s greatest strengths and a few of their weaknesses. Black Ice was one more AC/DC album, but a very, very good one that demonstrated their continued ability to be “just” a world-beating hard rock band, blissfully unaffected by the weight of their own history. Axl Rose (for this is, in many ways, a solo album, his vision made real by hired guns), by being away for so long, has managed to create his own context. Like Michael Jackson, he exists as myth and man at once, a recluse quite possibly driven mad by his talent and his past, a joke to many but still a god to some. The only question is whether the art is reward enough – if all this patience will be rewarded.
Guns N Roses - Chinese Democracy
Short answer: Yes. The opening title track, “Shackler’s Revenge,” “Better,” and “Street Of Dreams” (known for years to Guns N’ Roses concert attendees and bootleg downloaders as “The Blues”) are fierce, rocking tracks that reveal Rose’s vision as multifaceted. “Chinese Democracy” is a hard rock anthem, with atmospheric sounds and video-game guitar solos bolstering a fast, furious song that leaps from radio speakers. It doesn’t have the genuinely scary vitality of “Welcome To The Jungle,” but what mainstream rock song released in the last 22 years does? “Shackler’s Revenge,” licensed to Rock Band 2, combines a melodic chorus with an almost industrial-metal riff and groove that’s somewhere between Nine Inch Nails and Rob Zombie’s solo work. “Better” is a classic pop-metal anthem, a modern-day “Sweet Child O’ Mine” that displays the lyrical and melodic skills of a mature songwriter, and “Street Of Dreams” shows Rose in Elton John mode, rewriting “November Rain” without the orchestra, but with every bit of the pomp and grandiosity. Other tracks, particularly the desert techno-metal of “Riad N' The Bedouins” and the cyber-epic “Madagascar,” fill in the picture, providing evidence to whoever needed it that he hasn’t just been jacking off atop a giant pile of money for the last 15 years.
Chinese Democracy isn’t a perfect album. “Catcher In The Rye” is a particularly maudlin ballad on an album already heavy with them. And the horde of backing musicians, changing from track to track, makes it difficult for any one voice to leap from the pack – the sole exceptions being Rose’s yowl, still surprisingly potent, and Buckethead’s guitar solos, which sound like nothing else in rock music. But it’s a unique album, that’s for sure.
Ultimately, this doesn’t sound like Appetite For Destruction or either Use Your Illusion disc; in fact, it sounds more like the soundtrack to a high-tech Hollywood blockbuster, or maybe a Japanese cartoon. It’s easy to close your eyes and picture spiky-haired, big-eyed warrior girls leaping in the air, weapons blazing, as these cyber-metal riffs erupt from the speakers. However, it’s not so easy to imagine yourself watching a live band ripping through these songs on a stage. The 15-year gestation process has resulted in an album that sounds almost entirely inhuman. That’s not necessarily a criticism, though. The raucous, anarchic Guns N’ Roses died 20 years ago; any honest fan knows it. So you can either embrace this new, high-tech iteration, or not. It’s the only version Axl Rose is offering; he’s long since proved that you can take his art on his terms, or you can fuck off.
