I recall in '06 Axl saying that "this fall" the album will be released. I think it was supposed to do these gigs and then drop the album, but we know what happened. Also he added new vocals during this period to complete the album, you can clearly notice in CD where he sings clean (99-01 vocals, i.e Rihad, catcher, twat, postitute, etc)) and the ones with rasp (06-07 vocals i.e. some parts of if the world, SOD, IRS, Better, etc).