Listening to CD for the first time in 2 years

[maynard]

I think you are getting TWAT confused with Nightrain!

Everytime I listen to this album I like it less and less. It really is a complete mess.

Same here. When it finally arrived I enjoyed it, kinda like forcing myself to like it.

Then I started paying closer attention to the lyrics and.... realized they were shit, like... REALLY bad, teenager emo stuff.

Then I focused on the layers of music and... they were just power chords, pointless synth lines, dated beats and effects.

Then I listened closely to Axl's vocals and... they were so processed, he sounds like a robot.

I like Better, TWAT and Catcher demo and Madagascar at Rio3 and this is it. 14 songs, 4 are good. 10 are crap and hard to believe came from the same guy who wrote NR, Estranged and other perfect songs mixing rock/pop/epicness.

[Russel Nash]

It's still a great album to me. I would love to hear the 2002 raw version.

There's one song that always get the skip treatment: SCRAPED.

[RandallFlagg]

It's definitely Axl's white whale, he couldn't have made it with anyone else fighting for the helm, I class it as a GNR album but Axl's sole vision of a GNR album. If he had released it under a different name, I'd think 'Hey, this sounds like GNR if Axl had complete and utter dictatorship'. There is nothing lacking in any department that laments for an ex-member to return but that's part of the problem, it's like he is pretending everything's fine and dandy in Guns N' Roses, it's all still here. I can't explain it, you cannot complain about the sheer qualiry of Chinese Democracy, it lacks NOTHING in my estimation, it's a kind of lunatic genius, you don't hear stuff like this anywhere except when Axl is let loose. His voice is stupendous, enthralling, deranged. The lyrics aren't as strong as his diatribes and deep wellsprings of the past but I guess he's in a different place. Prostitute and Catcher are my highlights. The quality of his voice shifts like desert sand, it's hard to grip a central vein if that makes sense, it's inconsistent in terms of the delivery sounding like it travels across a vast expanse of years (which it did since the songs weren't recorded sequentially and simultaneously like most sane processes). The layers and layers and layers confuse the heck outta me still and I've listened to this one about 100 times.

The hectic variation of themes and styles is ridiculous, almost to a pretentious width and aeons away from 'playing it safe' to appease the fanbase after having fallen out with pretty much every single member of the old guard. It sounds exactly like you'd expect an Axl Rose project to sound yet it could also pass as a primitive and tentative sequel to some UYI cuts but it's just too polished and meandering in places, there's no outright rock n' roll to it either, IRS is the closest and that ain't Slash and Izzy in the verses, it's too tame, his vocals deserved a blazing attack backing him up there, that's where the banshee rage of him shines through, the rest of the record is beautiful but it is dangerous in a different way than we're used to, more expansive and abstract. Axl seems as if he is trying to stray as far from the band's roots as he can get away with but knowing he is restrained by his ambition whatever that means. He achieves his vision but the price is that he cannot release the price it's cost him, the energy, cause he's by himself trying to make people accept he was the core of GNR. He's definitelty always been the electricity of the band but one man cannot reanimate a corpse. Who the hell would dare to do such a thing with a multitude of musicians coming and going, it just adds to the funhouse. I can't say anything bad about this album but it isn't as perfect as he would have liked, Scraped is pretty funny. It's still great in places though. The perfectionist has to see his own flaws to progress though... he is failing to honour the album's weight right now.

Edited March 28, 2014 by RandallFlagg

[sturginho]

I havent listened to it in quite awhile after a long period of listening to it constantly, it has gone down a bit in my estimation, but overall I do still like it

[sturginho]

Once you notice that "bwoop!" sound in Prostitute, you can never unhear (I know that's not a word) it.

I've never been able to NOT hear the ridiculous whimper after the third line in Chinese Democracy after the first time I heard it. To me, thats exhibit A when people talk about how this album is overproduced with layers and layers of unnecessary things. I mean, why is that there?! I know its not a big deal, but I swear it annoys me every time I hear the song and think it just sounds idiotic. Its around 1:30-1:40 in the song.

I know what you mean, I just went and listened to the song to check that I was thinking of the same thing, it was pretty jarring the first time I heard it and made me think that no wonder the album took so long to come out if he has been adding all these little details to every song!

[wasteofammo]

The demos for CD and catcher are missed. Less mixing is better.

I'm am just glad I saw Axl in 2006 when he was the biggest badass on the planet. Those concerts meant something.

[Amir]

It's definitely Axl's white whale, he couldn't have made it with anyone else fighting for the helm, I class it as a GNR album but Axl's sole vision of a GNR album. If he had released it under a different name, I'd think 'Hey, this sounds like GNR if Axl had complete and utter dictatorship'. There is nothing lacking in any department that laments for an ex-member to return but that's part of the problem, it's like he is pretending everything's fine and dandy in Guns N' Roses, it's all still here. I can't explain it, you cannot complain about the sheer qualiry of Chinese Democracy, it lacks NOTHING in my estimation, it's a kind of lunatic genius, you don't hear stuff like this anywhere except when Axl is let loose. His voice is stupendous, enthralling, deranged. The lyrics aren't as strong as his diatribes and deep wellsprings of the past but I guess he's in a different place. Prostitute and Catcher are my highlights. The quality of his voice shifts like desert sand, it's hard to grip a central vein if that makes sense, it's inconsistent in terms of the delivery sounding like it travels across a vast expanse of years (which it did since the songs weren't recorded sequentially and simultaneously like most sane processes). The layers and layers and layers confuse the heck outta me still and I've listened to this one about 100 times.

The hectic variation of themes and styles is ridiculous, almost to a pretentious width and aeons away from 'playing it safe' to appease the fanbase after having fallen out with pretty much every single member of the old guard. It sounds exactly like you'd expect an Axl Rose project to sound yet it could also pass as a primitive and tentative sequel to some UYI cuts but it's just too polished and meandering in places, there's no outright rock n' roll to it either, IRS is the closest and that ain't Slash and Izzy in the verses, it's too tame, his vocals deserved a blazing attack backing him up there, that's where the banshee rage of him shines through, the rest of the record is beautiful but it is dangerous in a different way than we're used to, more expansive and abstract. Axl seems as if he is trying to stray as far from the band's roots as he can get away with but knowing he is restrained by his ambition whatever that means. He achieves his vision but the price is that he cannot release the price it's cost him, the energy, cause he's by himself trying to make people accept he was the core of GNR. He's definitelty always been the electricity of the band but one man cannot reanimate a corpse. Who the hell would dare to do such a thing with a multitude of musicians coming and going, it just adds to the funhouse. I can't say anything bad about this album but it isn't as perfect as he would have liked, Scraped is pretty funny. It's still great in places though. The perfectionist has to see his own flaws to progress though... he is failing to honour the album's weight right now.

Interesting point of view, but I do think the final album was a compromise in some ways. He lacked the confidence and/or label support to release the Beavan industrial Zep album, so instead we had this more traditional sounding (yet still modern) album thanks to the RTB rerecordings and Bumble adding sleazy fretless over things like the title track verses. The original IRS demo is pretty far removed from oldGNR, but then the final album version has like 3 layers of grinding rhythm guitar that drown out all the original electronic instrumentation.

I prefer the final album overall, but I'm still curious to hear the Beavan mixes in studio quality.