Album Reviews

Chinese Democracy
Guns N’ Roses – Chinese Democracy
3.0
 on
Wednesday, January 14, 2009 - 00:00
submitted by
Thomas

After having to wait literally half my life for a new Guns N’ Roses album, I think it was almost impossible for la Rose to live up to my expectations from the get-go. But after having heard “Chinese Democracy” a bunch of times I think it’s only fair to say that the result is even worse than I was expecting.

The album opens with the title track which would’ve ranged from okay to good if it wouldn’t have been fiddled with endlessly for years and years. And once the ballad “Street Of Dreams” kicks in, things take an even sharper turn for the worse with the distorted vocals in the beginning. There’s plenty of great moments on here but they are always followed by parts that range from awkward over cringeworthy to just plain bad. “If The World” is a horrid excuse for a ballad and I highly doubt that anyone is still waiting for the terrible Korn impression that Rose gives away in “Shackler’s Revenge” or the r&b-ish (!!!) “If The World”.

Everything on “Chinese Democracy” sounds either dated or overdone after having been filtered, processed, copied, pasted, added, dubbed, deleted and everything else one can do with a studio and way too much time on their hands. When you combine this musical atrocity with Axl Rose’s behaviour of the last decade, I think it’s easy to say that Guns N’ Roses’ reign is most definitely over and all that’s left is a joke that nobody’s laughing with.

Tom Dumarey
Tom Dumarey

Lacking the talent to actually play in a band, Tom decided he would write about bands instead. Turns out his writing skills are mediocre at best as well.