What do you think of Chinese Democracy?
 

Guns N' Roses is often times--on and off--within my Top 5 favorite bands. I view the original lineups of the band as the next logical succesors to the torch carried by The Rolling Stones and Aerosmith. Appetite for Destruction is a great rock album, if overrated; Lies is a fun little stop gap; The Use Your Illusions as flawed masterpieces, The Spaghetti Incident is downright fun, a great time. I love their cover of Sympathy for the Devil.

Having followed the history of Chinese Democracy's creation for years, we were led to believe Axl was crafting something truly epic in those years locked away in the studio.

Insiders described the album as a mix of the Wall and Physical Graffiti in sound, remixed by Trent Reznor and produced by Beck....As such I came to expect sonic masterpieces, pieces that brought the epic back to rock. Pieces similar to Achille's Last Stand, Queen, and the best of the Wall--an album of epics that would electrify the rock world--An experimental album, a perfect marriage of the clasic Hard Rock sound of the original Guns N' Roses and all the best sounds of the '90s--Grunge, industrial and so on. Ten minute long magnum opuses similar to Estranged and Coma in their complexity.

Instead, we got 14 fairly straight forward songs. For all the hype by the media and Axl himself about the album's complexity, it's a fairly straight forward album made artificially complex by adding hundreds of layers upon simple songs. It's a decent album but not at all what I expected.

What about you? What do you feel about it?

The singing style reminded me too much of Avenged Sevenfold and not enough of GnR.

I stopped listening after 10 minutes of trying to hold back the PTSD flashbacks.

I listened to it once when they had it streaming for free when it came out, then never listened to it again. That pretty much sums up my feelings about it.

This aint too bad, but then I am a bit biased:

I'm all for the people of China having a say in their government.

I thought it was massively overproduced. I thought the songs were good but there were too many years of influences from popular culture mixed into the multiple layers of music. I've said before elsewhere that eventually someone will, in the future, take those tapes, and break them down into bare-bones rock tracks and an entirely different album will emerge.

I can't believe people still talk about it. Must be that GnR name attached to it, because the music isn't what's keeping it relevant

Heard way worse 'comeback albums' from other bands. Also heard a lot better. Album for me had some enjoyable songs, If The World being my favorite and showcased that Axl could still use his voice in a powerful way.

But I'll let people keep talking about how a band isn't relevant anymore but somehow manages to pull in huge revenue with touring once in a blue moon. If people didn't care. Nobody would show up to the shows. It may have took Chinese Democracy a few good years to do it, but it's still a platinum selling record. So stick that in your know it all blow holes and spin on it.

The way people look at a bands relevance in the world here on the forum is just odd. Does anyone even know what it means and how to apply it to a band, or anything??? You don't think they have importance so you file them away in irrelevance? Doesn't make sense. Want an example of a proper way to apply irrelevance to a band? Poison. A huge band for a period in the 80's fizzled out in the 90's, then died slowly in the 2000's with spurts of success here and there before people stopped caring enough to keep them around. That didn't happen with GNR, in whatever incarnation Axl Rose resurfaced the band in. You just can't say a band isn't relevant anymore until the demand for them to tour or make any music it all is just plain and simple, gone. The figure of money thrown and Axl and Slash for this somewhat of a classic GNR reunion is ridiculously huge. Irrelevance does not bring forth a check like that folks. That is one hundred percent relevance right there.

haha, rose colored glasses.

You know I'm right Frownland. I'm completely right.

I don't understand though how it is that people that have never really been a fan of some band or whatever, can so easily throw around the word relevant, like at almost anything they don't care much for or hasn't been a band that has continued to tour and have positive interest their entire career. GNR goes away for this long, comes back, puts an album out, goes away for a few years, comes back. Money was involved. But you can't tell me the demand has never been there. It has always been there. You could try telling me that the demand was not from thousands or millions of fans. Just people wanting a nostalgia run. But that wouldn't discredit anything I've said about relevance or GNR.

So me being wrong in maybe your eyes if you don't agree, that to me does not make what I said not factual and it also doesn't matter to me. Because like I said. I'm right.

I just don't see people applying the term or word relevant correctly a whole lot here to an artist or band. It's used so loosely that I have no other way to view it other than they don't exactly know how to use the term, rather they just enjoy slapping it on whatever they care to and the people that agree with them only enable their behavior to do so.

Do I like this band? No. NOT A RELEVANT BAND. That seems to be the thought process.

What's relevance to you Frownland?

And blind nostalgia makes them relevant, not taste or anything of that sort. You asked why anyone would go to their shows and I gave you an answer.

Taste is relevant to the person. Millions of people found the album tasteful. I personally thought it was lacking very sorely for an album that took over a decade to record, but I wouldn't deny its relevance to those who like GNR and the album.

What I am trying to say to you or the point that I am trying to make Frownland, is that it doesn't matter that whoever is keeping GNR around, whether those people just want the nostalgia it brings them, is still a source of demand and it's been more than enough for GNR to give the fans at least something. Nostalgia. Genuine interest. It doesn't matter. If the demand is there. The band is relevant. When their tours begin to fail and people stop talking about GNR and nobody is throwing millions at them to make appearances, that's when I'll agree that they've become irrelevant. Because in most cases when a bands career reaches that point, guess what? They go away.

Hey, someone who partially gets what I'm saying. Cool.

@CN not really disagreeing with that anywhere in my posts, just taking it as an opportunity to **** on GNR.

I'd say they have awful taste if GNR is pleasing to them, but remember, I'm an *******. Plus, I bought the album in high school and thought it sucked so...

You just enjoy your music with a bit more complexity. You like 9's not 4's man.

haha, well don't think I'm bothered or anything because I'm not. I'm not like that. I'm not getting my underwear in a bunch.

Sh*t on them all you like man. I don't care about that. I'm talking about relevance. Not about how much you think they're sh*t.

@Fred

And just so it's out there Fred. I like my music with more complexity as well. But I also enjoy the simpler stuff that's out there too.

*avoids grammar nazi comment with every fiber of his being*

Just do it. I have a feeling I know what it is anyway.

they're

Damn you fixed it before I could check.

Now I'm curious. Can't seem to find it.
Just write it in a really small font. That'd probably be less dickish.

EDIT: Sneaky.

I like it all man. I think its important to branch out into it all because music can grow very stagnant if you start turning your nose up at less complex stuff. There is beauty to be found in all forms of music.

I fixed it before I saw your comment because I find my own grammatical errors. Not saying I'm perfect, more so that I know how to type or write better than some. I hate coming off as illiterate. That's why I care about what I write looking proper.

I also commented on your post about it though. So I went back and found nothing. Confusion struck. But then I stopped caring due to already fixing the mistake before reading your post about it...so, yeah.

Where's the beauty in what Lil' Wayne feeds his fans then? I gave his music so many chances. The conclusion I came to was that his music was just bad in general, or that it flew over my head, I missed the point of it. Noise to my ears with horridly illiterate writing. At least he enjoys what he does. I suppose his fans do too.

True dat.

The beauty is your probably three cups in on the sizzurp and having the time of your life. Who cares about actually understanding Lil Wayne at that point.

I'd say you're abusing the term "relevant" by tying it to "interest". It's a pretty nebulous word, but it tends to imply that, at least in a musical sense, an artist still has a creative affect on the world around them (i.e. other bands hear *Album A* and are so impressed that they incorporate that band's sound into their own). Appetite for Destruction might still be "relevant" for some retro glam/rock bands, but GNR stopped being relevant in any interesting sense of the word over twenty years ago.

If you just wanna say that people still like GNR, then fine, obviously they do, but who cares? People like lots of ****ty ****, even years after they should have stopped.

I'll let you're grammar slide, Fred, because you're not a dick.

Affect is the verb. Effect is the noun. Learn to English, dumbass.

Sorry man, but you asked for it. Probably.

When did I use either word?

^

Oh, dear god, no!

GNR, the newer version, toured every year between 2011-2014, and sold very well, in fact being named touring act of the year by classic rock mag in 2012 (for 2011) if I recall correctly. The U.S. shows I went to during that period all sold out, and scalpers were getting paid serious bucks. The Euro tours sold out- almost every venue. So they have been "relevant" in regards to touring for the majority of the 2010s. "Blue moon" isn't correct, sorry.
Don't waste time arguing relevance- it's a meaningless term. has nothing to do with the quality of the music or the performance of it. Nada.

I found Chinese Democracy to be well-intentioned, but you can hear a lot of overthinking in the production. I wouldn't be surprised if they had half a dozen versions of each song.

I think half a dozen is a pretty small number for your average major label release. Twelve dozen might be more accurate.

I meant half a dozen of each song of fully mixed versions. I'm sure there were more 'half finished, let's try this direction' versions that didn't get that far. Then again, I don't know anything about major label production so maybe you're right.

Well. This is Axl Rose we're talking about here. There were more likely a couple dozen versions of each song. If The World was the best executed and most accomplished song on the entire album. So I can only imagine the amount of different version it had before he was satisfied.

If we are to believe the rumors, 9 of the songs were finished pre-2000.And then re-finished again by 2002, 2003, 2007 and so on. Remember, an actual album was readied for submission to Geffen, Black Frog & Uzi a number of times, so that means, as you said, final mixes for each version exist. How much was changed each time is unknown, and I imagine at some point they will leak out and give us an idea of the process. Again, the rumor is that Axl was influenced over the years by styles of music then becoming popular- like grunge, like alt-rock, like emo, and he then incorporated those flavors into the mixes, for better or worse. We don't really know if the original mixes were the usual raw and rough GNR sound, the more processed later work, or something totally new to begin with.

The actual substance of the album is pretty good i.e the lyrics, the melodies. But the production and timbres of the instruments completely ruin it. Axl's voice sounds like its been filtered through windows '95 and the widdly-woo guitar tone on most of the solos is headache inducing. It's a breath of relief any time a piano breaks through the hundreds of layered tracks. What made Appetite (and other bands like Oasis when they first came out) so refreshing was how unashamedly traditional rock n' roll they were. Chinese Democracy is Axl trying to fit the GNR sound through a dozen subgenres that were all long done with by the time the album came out.