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[JACKSPARROW]

this guy chose rhiad over sorry.... 

dont give me that 'its just his opinion' bullshit... somethings wrong
i give the video four lawls 

I too prefer Riad over Sorry

[Journeyman]

Sorry if it has been posted. In a quick look i didnt find it.

Its a good review, 4 out of 5 stars!! Its big but worth the read

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:kcftxzwkldje~T1

To put Chinese Democracy in some perspective: it arrives 17 years after the twin Use Your Illusion, the last set of original music by Guns N' Roses. Consider that 17 years prior to the Illusions, it was 1974, back before the Ramones and Sex Pistols, back before Aerosmith had Rocks and Toys in the Attic, back before Queen had A Night at the Opera — back before almost anything that Axl Rose worships even existed. Generations have passed in these 17 years, but not for Axl. He cut himself off from the world following the trouble-ridden Use Your Illusion tour, retreating to the Hollywood Hills, swapping every original GNR member in favor of contract players culled from his mid-'90s musical obsessions — Tommy Stinson from the Replacements, Robin Finck from Nine Inch Nails, Buckethead from guitar magazines — as he turned into rock's Charles Foster Kane, a genius in self-imposed exile spending millions to make his own Xanadu, Chinese Democracy.

Like Xanadu, Chinese Democracy is a monument to man's might, but where Kane sought to bring the world underneath his roof, Axl labored to create an ideal version of his inner world, working endlessly on a set of songs about his heartbreak, persecution, and paranoia, topics well mined on the Illusions. Using the pompous ten-minute epics "Estranged" and "November Rain" as his foundation, Axl strips away all remnants of the old, snake-dancing GNR, shedding the black humor and blues, replacing any good times with vindictive spleen in the vein of "You Could Be Mine." All this melodrama and malevolence feels familiar and, surprisingly, so does much of Chinese Democracy, even for those listeners who didn't hear the portions of the record as leaked demos and live tracks. Despite a few surface flourishes — all the endless, evident hours spent on Pro Tools, a hip-hop loop here, a Spanish six-string there, absurd elastic guitar effects — this is an album unconcerned with the future of rock & roll. One listen and it's abundantly clear that Axl spent the decade-plus in the studio not reinventing but refining, obsessing over a handful of tracks, and spending an inordinate amount of time chasing the sound in his head — that's it, no more, no less.

Such maniacal indulgence is ridiculous but strangely understandable: Rose received unlimited time and money to create this album, so why not take full advantage and obsess over every last detail? The odd thing is, he spent all this time and money on an album that is deliberately not a grand masterpiece — a record that pushes limits or digs deep — but merely a set of 14 songs. Compared to the chaotic Use Your Illusion, Chinese Democracy feels strangely modest, but that's because it's a single polished album, not a double album so overstuffed that it duplicates songs. Modest is an odd word for an album a decade-plus in the making, but Axl's intent is oddly simple: he sees GNR not as a gutter-rock band but as a pomp-rock vehicle for him to lash out against all those who don't trust him, whether it's failed friends, lapsed fans, ex-lovers, former managers, fired bandmates, or rock critics. Chinese Democracy is the best articulation of this megalomania as could be possible, so the only thing to quibble about is his execution, which occasionally is perplexing, particularly when Rose slides into hammy vocal inflections or encourages complicated guitar that only guitarists appreciate (it's telling that the only memorable phrases from Robin Finck, Buckethead, or Bumblefoot or whoever are ones that mimic Slash's full-throated melodic growl). Even with these odd flourishes, it's hard not to marvel, either in respect or bewilderment, at the dense, immaculate wall of god knows how many guitars, synthesizers, vocals, and strings.

The production is so dense that it's hard to warm to, but it fits the music. These aren't songs that grab and hold; they're songs that unfold, so much so that Chinese Democracy may seem a little underwhelming upon its first listen. It's not just the years of pent-up anticipation, it's that Axl spent so much time creating the music — constructing the structure and then filling out the frame — that there's no easy way into the album. That, combined with the realization that Axl isn't trying to reinvent GNR, but just finishing what he started on the Illusions, can make Chinese Democracy seem mildly anticlimactic, but Rose spent a decade-plus working on this — he deserves to not have it dismissed on a cursory listen. Give it time, listening like it was 1998 and not 2008, and the album does give up some terrific music — music that is overblown but not overdone.

True, those good moments are the songs that have kicked around the Internet for the entirety of the new millennium: the slinky, spiteful "Better," slowly building into its fury; the quite gorgeous if heavy-handed "Street of Dreams"; "There Was a Time," which overcomes its acronym and lack of chorus on its sheer drama; "Catcher in the Rye," the lightest, brightest moment here; the slow, grinding "I.R.S."; and "Madagascar," a ludicrous rueful rumination that finds space for quotations from Martin Luther King amidst its trip-hop pulse. These aren't innovations; they're extensions of "Breakdown" and "Estranged," epics that require some work to decode because Axl forces the listener to meet him on his own terms. This all-consuming artistic narcissism has become Rose's defining trait, not letting him move forward, but only to relentlessly explore the same territory over and over again. And this solipsism turns Chinese Democracy into something strangely, surprisingly simple: it won't change music, it won't change any lives, it's just 14 more songs about loneliness and persecution. Or as Axl put it in an apology for canceled concerts in 2006, "In the end, it's just an album." And it's a good album, no less and no more.

[BlackBeautyLesPaul]

I don't care for it...

[jmo101]

The first thing in HISTORY the Globe has gotten right!!

[bednarik602]

http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/music/20081123_Axl_Rose_delivers__after_17_years.html

i posted this in the other section-not sure where to put it delete the wrong one, thanks


Axl Rose delivers, after 17 years

By Dan DeLuca

Inquirer Music Critic
At long last, Chinese Democracy has arrived. And on behalf of procrastinators everywhere, I'd like to offer hearty congratulations to Axl Rose for finally completing his magnum opus.

After all, why do today what you put off for 17 years? That's how long it's been since Guns N' Roses put out an album of original music. It was 1991 when the savage Los Angeles hard-rock band, in a characteristic act of hubris, released two, with Use Your Illusion I and II.

But is that really so long to wait? Sure, Michelangelo knocked out the Sistine Chapel ceiling in four years, but the dude got to lie flat on his back the whole time. Axl, like Atlas, has had to carry the weight of an ever-changing world on his shoulders for nearly two decades.

And he's still managed to unleash the 14-song, 71-minute, shockingly good Chinese Democracy (Black Frog ***½), which goes on sale today exclusively at Best Buy, in just the same amount of time it took James Joyce to write Finnegan's Wake.

Along the way, Rose has been written off as a petulant, tantrum-throwing monomaniac, not to mention an obsessively neurotic tinkerer who, at last count, had spent more than $13 million on an album that even ardent GN'R fans had given up on ever hearing.

It's turned out, however, that the red-headed, hip-shimmying, now 46-year-old Rose is a genius when it comes to at least one thing: expectation management.

All the other key GN'R members are long gone from the band, including onstage foil Slash, bass player Duff McKagan, and crucially, guitarist Izzy Stradlin, the band's best songwriter.

"Oh My God," Axl's only GN'R music to come out in the interim (on the soundtrack to the 1999 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie End Of Days) was a dismal, dull disappointment. New GN'R gigs often proved to be debacles, like the 2002 show at the Wachovia Center that never happened because Axl stayed in his New York hotel room, instigating a near-riot. And the dense, deep-voiced Chinese teaser "Shackler's Revenge," released in September on the video game Rock Band, hardly seemed buzz-worthy.

So it stood to reason that if Chinese Democracy ever came out, it was bound to be a bloated, Heaven's Gate of a letdown, a would-be masterpiece weighed down by self-importance, woefully out of step with times that have long since passed him by.

But with expectations thus diminished, Chinese Democracy turns out to be the surprise of a season that's already seen comeback albums by hard-rock acts Metallica and AC/DC.

It doesn't suck, after all. And while it's proudly excessive and unquestionably epic, with as many as five multi-tracked guitarists in Robin Finck, Paul Tobias, Richard Fortus, Buckethead and Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal filling in for Slash and Stradlin, the album only occasionally comes off as gratuitously indulgent.

Chinese Democracy - which Rose is said to have named after seeing Martin Scorsese's Kundun in 1997, and has been streaming at the band's MySpace site since Thursday - avoids going down a dark, techno-industrial alley that many GN'R fans feared with the presence of Nine Inch Nails' Finck.

It doesn't sound hopelessly stuck in the early '90s, either. Jittery beats and Spanish guitar underpin the apocalyptic "If the World," and metal machine-gun riffage fires up "Scraped," with Rose screeching, "Don't try to stop us now / I just won't let you."

Almost every song takes its time ebbing and flowing to near-orchestral crescendos. Six tracks, including the stately "Catcher in the Rye," seemingly a nod to fellow recluse J.D. Salinger, stretch to more than five minutes.

Many seem to be about the album itself. "All I got is precious time," Rose sings wryly in the title cut. In a scratchy voice that shows its age, he allows, "I can't find my way back any more," in "Madagascar," a song that samples both the Paul Newman movie Cool Hand Luke (a Rose favorite) and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech.

The latter song, along with the Elton John-ish "Street of Dreams" (previously known as "The Blues"), has been performed for years by the new version of GN'R, which seems to include Illusion-era pianist Dizzy Reed, bassist Tommy Stinson, drummer Frank Ferrer, and multi-instrumentalist Chris Pitman, along with guitarists Fortus and Thal.

Maybe it's because Rose wrote these songs - and, for all we know, recorded his vocals - years ago, but Chinese Democracy is not heavy with portent and solemn middle-age regret. Rose may not look the same as he did back in his "November Rain" days, but he still sounds feisty and spirited, blaming the world for his troubles. "I'm sorry for you," he sings on "Sorry." "Not sorry for me."

Since Use Your Illusion, grunge has come and gone, and rappers have filled the roles that used to be played by self-aggrandizing rock stars. GN'R cover bands abound, and even the likes of Carrie Underwood and Sheryl Crow have been known to dip into the band's songbook in search of un-ironic rock-and-roll swagger.

There's some question as to how much appetite there is for Chinese Democracy among a downloading crowd that was barely alive when GN'R last weighed in. Should they choose to give old man Axl a chance, however, they'll find that the long-missing rocker has more left to offer than anyone could have reasonably expected.

[b]

Here it comes.

[anythinggoes]

Sorry no scans or links. But Kerrang gave The album KK which is classed as average stating that the songs were dated and Mis-Matched, seems the only songs they liked were TWAT and Madagasca

[Starscream]

Just picked up the magazine, the biggest weekly for this kind of music in the UK, and noticed the low score :'(. Suprising considering everyone else has been praising the album and I myself think its brilliant. There is also a photo of Axl I have never seen before, in a suit, which covers almost an entire page.

I suppose it shouldn't come as a suprise for a magazine that usually have Fall Out Boy on the cover and in 2006 said that the best thing about the Guns N Roses concert in Wembley was their Bullet for my Valentine support lol

The reviewer gets enough words in (Kerrang normally do very short reviews but this one gets half the page) but he can't seem to move past the fact that GNR as an older outfit are gone and that a new GNR are here.

[CalumFarq]

Just picked up the magazine, the biggest weekly for this kind of music in the UK, and noticed the low score :'(. Suprising considering everyone else has been praising the album and I myself think its brilliant. There is also a photo of Axl I have never seen before, in a suit, which covers almost an entire page.

I suppose it shouldn't come as a suprise for a magazine that usually have Fall Out Boy on the cover and in 2006 said that the best thing about the Guns N Roses concert in Wembley was their Bullet for my Valentine support lol

The reviewer gets enough words in (Kerrang normally do very short reviews but this one gets half the page) but he can't seem to move past the fact that GNR as an older outfit are gone and that a new GNR are here.

I never liked kerrang!
This review just prves how they are so small minded 

[XMr.BrownstoneX]

There's a big promotion of C.D on Kerrang going on!! Check it out:







http://www.kerrang.com/

Sorry If posted Before.

[luket93]

maybe this is just the promotion the album needed

it might take a while for it to really kick off

 

[Bumble-head]

Rating: * * * *

Forget the farce of how long this album took to surface, and don't worry about the many millions it cost to record and the supposed lunacy of leader Axl Rose because Chinese Democracy is solid, ambitious, and, often, triumphantly over the top.

There are guitar solos galore, with the one in Better a slaughter - like being shot down by a machine gun in a firing squad.

It may not have the Guns N' Roses' sleaze of old, but it makes up for it with soul, brazeness, and a little bit of slothful funk on songs like If the World.

Of the 14 tracks it's that one which proves Rose hasn't lost his marbles because it lurches along at a sublime pace, with greasy flamenco guitar, graunches of distortion, and subtle stabs of piano, creating a multi-layered masterpiece.

It would be easy to scoff at Chinese Democracy wouldn't it? Rose is the only original band member left; there have been many false starts and missed release dates; and it's been 17 years since double offering Use Your Illusion I and II, which was the last new Guns N' Roses material.

However, one of the best things about the album is that while you could read a thing or two into lyrics like "Nothing's impossible, I am inconquerable", from the rabid Scraped, Rose doesn't sulk or feel the need to prove a point.

There's nothing here quite as powerful and potent as 1987 debut, Appetite For Destruction, or as vital as Use Your Illusion, but Rose doesn't miss Slash and the rest of his old band.

And besides, that voice of his had a majority share holding in what made Gunners so distinct.

As many who saw the Gunners at Vector Arena last year will agree, his voice is still as strong and sometimes as blood-curdling as ever. On This I Love it's as if he's showing off as he moves from Broadway singer into that trademark throatie sneering shriek.

Elsewhere, the swooning strings, forlorn horns, and soaring guitars of Madagascar is as grand, yet not quite as catchy, as November Rain; and as far as heavier moments go there are none better than Riad N' The Bedouins, with its psychopathic jaunt and Rose's sucking vocals a la Welcome to the Jungle, and Shackler's Revenge, which sounds like pulsing and mangled industrial metal meets the sleaze of Paradise City.

The only weak moment is Prostitute, an unfortunate and whimpy finale to an otherwise grunty and accomplished album.

Nice work Axl. Now for the next one.

Scott Kara

http://blogs.nzherald.co.nz/blog/music-reviews/2008/11/27/guns-n-roses-chinese-democracy/?c_id=264&objectid=10545169

But they didn't like Prostitute 

Mods: If this needs to go somewhere else or has already been posted do what you please 

[Tronx]

NIce review anyway

[Bumble-head]

NIce review anyway

Yeah at least he reviewed the music rather than the whole saga surrounding it and he recognises the merits of the new band.