Chinese Democracy track by track.
Title track: The ambience at the beginning is cool and the intro starts out somewhat promising but once the actual song kicks in I quickly realise what I had already suspected, that this is not only an Axl solo album not worthy of the GnR name but the fact that this album took forever to complete really shows because this sounds dated already even though its clearly an attempt to be more modern. It sounds like post grunge, blah.
Shackler's Revenge: What in the F*CK is this? That guitar riff at the beginning (Buckethead?) sounds rancid, now hes trying to be industrial and the results are unintentionally funny, but once you get to the chorus you realise that, no wait, this is post grunge still. NEXT.
Better: This one isn't so bad, it still sounds nu metaly/douche rock but at it has some decent hooks I guess.
Street Dreams: There's actually a nice melody going on here but I'm trying to wonder what the hell Axl is doing with his voice. However it starts out interestingly enough but once it gets to the chorus I've lost interest. Eh, not terrible but whatev.
If The World: Now hes trying to do some kind of acid jazz/Portishead kinda thing. But surprisingly I like this one just fine, its a good break from what the album has been so far, basic generic "rawk" that offers nothing new whatsoever and if it wasn't for Axl's vocals I would confuse it with the stuff all those post grunge bands put it out all the time. This one is decent though.
There Was a Time: Pretty bland, it starts out like a Linkin Park thing but then it goes back into more bland radio rock.
Catcher in the rye: Very impressive intro with nice piano, great bass work. But after that it just sounds like another post grunge song and I have difficulty distinguishing them at this point.
Scraped: WTF, acappella Axl? But wouldn't you know it, it ends up being another hard rock song but heres a kicker, I quite like this one. Great drums and a very groovy thumpy riff. A pretty cool guitar solo too courtesy of Buckethead. Best song on the album so far.
Riad N' The Bedouins: I notice that Axl now likes to throw these bits at the beginning of songs to give you the impression that they're gonna be more experimental than they really are. It's not really that experimented to throw in a little ambience before a standard hard rock song. Another pattern being constantly repeated is that every song has parts I like and parts I don't like, a song seems like its going somewhere (in this case back to the roots of GnR) and then it desolves into a chorus that sounds like something from a Chevile album, bleh. The guitar solo is cool, though most of the guitar solos on this album don't even seem to fit the songs.
Sorry: Sebastion Bach said this was gonna be like doom metal, what? Doom metal lite I guess. The lyrics really dominate this one so at this point I can't ignore how banal they are. It's just Axl whining about all the people who think hes a douche I think.
I.R.S.: At this point I'm running out of things to say other than "I like this part but not this part". There's a part that's very Pink Floyd like, but what kind of songs are these when the good parts are so fleeting?
Madagascar: People seem to like this one more than the others and I'm wondering what they are thinking. This is a bloated mess. Axl sounds like he's trying to be Tom Waits, the strings and brass sound tacky and meh, worst on the album I think.
This I Love: This has to have been something Axl wrote around the UYI sessions, it's very derivative of November Rain/Don't Cry but since I have a weak spot for Axl's smaltzy ballads I confess to liking this one. Sweet solo too. Another one of the few bright moments on the album I think.
Prostitute: Eh, this is like Evanessence or something, generic rock riffs and strings, that sums up a good portion of this album, even the better songs are clearly imitations of something else. Overall a pretty underwhelming closer for a very underwhelming album.
Overall I don't think this album is as terrible as people have been saying but it's quite mediocre, there's three songs I can say I genuinely like (If the World, Scraped, This I Love) and everything else either has some fleetingly decent moments or none. I say check those 3 songs out and if you hate them and you probably will then just forget about the rest, I can't believe I actually invested my time into listening to the whole thing. It was pretty painful and I'm not doing it again.
A 2......................... out of 5.
Last edited by boo boo; 07-30-2010 at 02:40 AM.
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