I may be way off here, but during the Axl chats, when one of the users asked him for his thoughts on Contraband, he made a point to say that it was a good question, but it was going to take longer than he had the time for to give a detailed answer. And I always thought that maybe Axl felt there were some of those songs on that album that should have rightfully been Guns material? Especially when you factor in that Izzy worked with the guys involved in VR at the beginning. I wonder if there were riffs and ideas that made it onto that album, that were born in some of the last official 90's GNR sessions.
Just seemed to me that an answer of "creatively uninspired" or "not really what Im into at the moment" would have been easy enough. By not saying something like that, you can kind of read between the lines and see that Axl did dig some of the stuff. Evidenced later on by his willingess to sing "Slither".