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With most of the world expecting an overblown ego trip and the rest past caring, countless years and line-up changes later, Guns N' Roses' ‘Chinese Democracy’ finally arrives. Anything other than a complete disaster has to be heralded as a triumph for Axl Rose – and he just about manages it.
The fact that it has been completed at all is quite remarkable considering the amount of legal wrangling and false starts that have hampered the record. But there is little point if it is not worth listening too. Of course, it isn't ‘Appetite For Destruction’. There are unsubtle nods to the band's early behemoth, but the rapid recklessness of their 1987 debut is not relevant decades on. Also, without the original Guns – especially the fluent excesses of Slash's solos - it feels the new players are imitating rather than innovating.
It is difficult to capture the same breakneck speed though when 12 of the 14 songs insist on straining themselves far past the four minute mark. Epic tracks are created not through length and pomp but with purposeful progression. Rather than build from playful or solemn beginnings into staggering finales such as on the likes of ‘Paradise City’ and ‘November Rain’, ‘Better’ and ‘I.R.S’ begin rugged and workmanlike and maintain their pace.
There is variety though, especially in the instrumentation that seeps from the seams of ‘There Was A Time’ and ‘If The World’. Axl's much-documented desire for grandeur amongst the grit of Guns N Roses is partially satisfied, with the songs satiated with pianos, strings and computer effects. These do add an extra dimension compared to the throwaway tosh of ‘Riad N' the Bedouins’, but extinguish any possibilities of spontaneity - it sounds planned within an inch of its life.
‘Scraped’ is almost a Muse song, its warped fret wizardry melding with paranoid intensity, and is strangely exhilarating. The military sobriety of ‘Madagascar’, morphing into sampling of Martin Luther King Jr, is another departure, an attempt at a meaningful moment that comes across over-thought and undercooked. However, despite there being few stand-out moments, ‘Chinese Democracy’ is saved by the very reason it isn't better - it's creator.
Axl's lyrics are as insipid as ever but somehow match the idle anger that festers in his finest flashes. He labours over slow songs, seemingly still aching over Stephanie Seymour and everybody else he has crossed in the mess of his middle years. He screeches his distinctive wail in the harder numbers and rubs his mark over every inch of the record. It's loud and abrasive, then slumps into brooding fits of melodrama. It's ambitious but doesn't seem to be going anywhere. It flirts with brilliance but flits it away in gluttony and overexertion. Above all, it certainly causes a stir, but since when did Guns N' Roses need an album to do that?
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