ASSOCIATE EDITOR KORY GROW—GUNS N’ ROSES, 'CHINESE DEMOCRACY': THE REVIEW

The other day, Axl Rose released the first new Guns N’ Roses album in 15 years. The operative words in that last sentence, of course, are “Axl Rose.” His myriad album delays, seemingly dictatorial control of his bandmates, and years-early tours supporting this record have all made him more of a social curiosity than a musical threat. Since Rose has rendered himself the last man standing in hard rockers Guns N’ Roses, all eyes have been on him to deliver something that lives up to the legacy of blockbusters like 1987’s Appetite for Destruction and 1991’s Use Your Illusion double release.

And as a solo album, Chinese Democracy is actually quite good and continues the reclusive frontman’s dalliances with soppy Elton John-like ballad rock (think “Estranged,” “November Rain,” or, uh, “Don’t Cry”). The most “Axl” of these is “Sorry,” a tongue-in-cheek apology for being a bad boy, but there are so many lava-lamp guitar moments that it sounds almost sincere. Unfortunately, the songs that aren’t mid-tempo or piano-driven—there are four (including the R&B-inflected “Scraped”)—are hardly startling calls to arms like “Welcome to the Jungle” or raucous sing-alongs like “Paradise City”; instead they seem utilitarian. Even the Buckethead-co-authored “Schackler’s Revenge,” arguably the album’s best song, acts more like a bridge within the album than a single. Sure, it has a chorus that sticks with you, and Mr. ’Head’s guitar playing is jaw-dropping in a technically precise way that Slash could never achieve, but it lacks the bloodlust the old GN’R lineup had. In the context of the album, however, it does get listeners amped up for the UYI-worthy “Better” (another of the album’s best songs—much, uh, better than the version that leaked a couple years ago).

The album’s most impressive feat is the depth of sound in each song. Fifteen years is a long time to work on new material, and Rose must have meticulously questioned the worth of every track, every note, every space between a note that makes up the album’s 71 minutes. (Where it suffers is that, sometimes the songs sound disjointed—fused by ProTools, which came into prominence around 1997, awhile after Rose began working on Chinese Democracy—as if the musicians knew they were playing something, but not the greater context of the song. And they probably didn’t.) “If the World” features world music interludes, “Better” has electro-rock intros with feminine vocals, and “Madagascar” has shimmering synths and samples of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The album’s best ballad, “This I Love” (which Rose supposedly penned around 1993), works because he uses “November Rain”-like strings to boost an otherwise plain, almost predictable song.

Of course, the most disappointing aspect of Chinese Democracy is that it’s not a hard-rock tour de force, something that fits into Guns N’ Roses’ history. What it is, though, is a great “just-rock” solo album with some surprisingly strong moments. It sounds like Axl competing with the pop superstars of the day (that day being 1995). He would have succeeded, too. But in today’s context, it’s a spectacle more than a record, one that answers the question, “So, what does 13 some odd million dollars sound like?” Thank God that wasn’t also the price tag when we bought the album at Best Buy.