guns and roseschinese democracy
It’s, I dunno, OK I guess. I really don’t get why Axl was such a perfectionist that it took him 15 years to finish what we got. There’s a really good, detailed review up on AVClub.com where the reviewer notes that a couple of lines changed in between the leaked and final versions, and wonders if there’s a vault full of outtakes featuring Axl agonizing over one spoken-word line over and over and then deciding that THIS take was the best one.

The first single, "Chinese Democracy", sounds about the same as the leaked version that’s been kicking around my MP3 playlist for months now, so no biggie there. The rest sounds like he got all wrapped up in trying to create 10 new versions of "Estranged"/"November Rain"/"Civil War" etc and got lost in the details of perfectionism rather than paying attention to the bigger picture.

Guitar solos are all pretty good and most of the piano ballads are moving and nice, but really is it anything better than what Velvet Revolver accomplished on the two CDs they produced while waiting for Axl? No. I like "IRS", I like "Street of Dreams" (aka The Blues), I like "Madagascar", but we’ve already heard all those songs leaked before and there’s nothing here that makes this final version of the CD worth running out and buying. And really no Slash and no Izzy = no buys and sadly this album is going to down in history more for the comical buildup than for anything Axl has to say on it.