Worth The Wait: Guns ‘n’ Roses Triumphant ‘Chinese Democracy’
While heavy metal fans hoping for a top to bottom headbanging barrage like the title song of ‘Chinese Democracy’ may have been disappointed, the long awaited and forever delayed Guns ‘n’ Roses release may very well 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’. KISS is a good example–a lot of purists hated it when they took off their makeup and became another 80′s ‘hair metal’ band, but they deserved respect for doing something different and trying to forge a new artistic path. On the other hand, there’s KISS now: Gene Simmons eventually made the calculated, slightly cynical decision that commerce trumped art. Hes now giving fans the best representation of KISS that their nostalgic desires long for”to the extent of dressing a new guitarist and drummer up like Ace Frehley and Peter Criss. Not exactly a high water mark in artistic creativity, but a highly lucrative enterprise that reportedly nets Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley a cool half million bucks per concert.
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.
In a lot of ways, ‘Chinese Democracy’ builds upon the variety and complexity of the two ‘Use Your Illusion’ albums. Like ‘Illusion’, the album grows and evolves with repeated listening.
On Chinese Democracy is definitely an album that lends itself to repeated listening. A great case in point is the song ‘Better’ It doesn’t really jump out on first listen, but 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 Elton John-esque piano 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.
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.
Still, that’s a very minor caveat about what is overall an amazing piece of work. Hopefully those who have bought in to all of the negative media hype can put their prejudices aside and give ‘Chinese Democracy’ about it. They’ll hear the powerful sound of a great band charting new musical frontiers which is what rock music is supposed to be about.
Ross Everett is a experienced freelance writer who covers travel, poker and sports handicapping. He is a staff handicapper for Anatta Sports where he is responsible for providing daily free sports picks. In his spare time he enjoys fine dining, fencing and scuba diving. He lives in Southern Nevada with four dogs and a pet coyote.
