First the bad news: Chinese Democracy is not the heavy metal sonic assault suggested by the early release of the title track. On the other hand, it very well may be the best album of the year.
After a rock band becomes a major success, they’re really in a ‘no win’ position. If they try to break new artistic ground, exploring different sounds or influences, they’ll invariably hear complaints that they were better the way they ‘used to be’. If they keep doing things the same way, a band risks losing any sort of artistic relevance and becoming a ‘nostalgia act’. Some bands try to stay innovative for awhile, but eventually assume the role of a ‘nostalgia act’ due to the financial upside that sometimes results.
Axl Rose could have taken the same route with Guns n Roses. Patch things up with former lead guitarist Slash and they could have toured forever playing the old songs for nostalgic fans and made a ridiculous amount of money. To some extent, Slash has chosen this route with his band Velvet Revolver. They play similar blues based hard rock to vintage GnR, and brought in former Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland on vocals (who sounded almost just like Axl on a number of the early STP songs)
Axl refused to play the nostalgia game. Hes a very talented guy, but he doesn’t have much of a knack for self promotion or media spin. While he worked on putting together a new version of the band and recording Chinese Democracy he let a variety of interests”not the least of which were his old bandmates”control the media spin. For that reason, there are plenty of people including media and critics that have predisposed to hating this album before it was released or even having heard any of it.
Many albums are fairly straightforward and are easy to figure out with a couple of listens. They fit a certain formula, with a power ballad, a hit single, a filler song, etc. Others evolve and change with repeated listening”different songs become your favorites, you notice new things about ones you thought you knew well and most significantly songs that you glossed over the first time around start to grow on you.
On Chinese Democracy that’s definitely the case”the best example being the song Better. It doesn’t really impress on first listen, but quickly becomes a favorite. Axl claims that he doesn’t try to write hit singles and that’s probably the case, but in addition to being an impressive tour de force for Robin Finck on guitar it may be the catchiest pop song since The Killers first album.
One of the real triumphs of Chinese Democracy is the difficulty that a listener has in pigeonholing the songs”with the overall observation that there’s a lot of the Elton John inspired piano stuff first heard on the Illusion albums its clear that the band is going in a new musical direction and one that is somewhat unpredictable but very exciting.
The only real liability of ‘Chinese Democracy’ is that a few songs have been watered down by overproduction”biggest case in point Madagascar which the band has been playing live for the better part of this decade. The album version doesn’t quite have the edge or raw emotion that was on display when played live.
Still, that’s a very minor caveat about what is overall an amazing piece of work. Hopefully those who have bought in to all of the negative media hype can put their prejudices aside and give ‘Chinese Democracy’ about it. They’ll hear the powerful sound of a great band charting new musical frontiers which is what rock music is supposed to be about.