The "New Album" Thread . The maybe, possibly, at some point, soon, whenever, wtf Axl thread🤞

[smokingarthur]

1 hour ago, Billy Cundy said:

So true. You can tell at this point in their career(s), they just bowed down to whatever weird, uncool decision Axl wanted to shoehorn in. All the ‘deep voice’ adlibs, the sound effects, the bar room piano, the crushing lengths of the tracks. A producers job is to step in and make tough decisions to make songs as tight as possible. Trim the fat and tie everything together. Clink was, I imagine, just demoted to engineer at this point, and Axl was given free reign. 

I love the songs. YCBM, Estranged, Bad Apples, Civil War. There’s some incredible melodies and performances. But yeah, it’ll never be a classic album because it’s hard to stomach the weirdness. And it’s not ‘weirdness’ in a hip sense like Captain Beefheart, Steely Dan, or King gizzard and the lizard wizard.. it’s weird in the ‘oh man these guys are missing the mark’ kind of way. 
 

 

Well said, this is absolutely true. Nevertheless, all those bizarre inclusions in the Illusions don’t detract from the fact that those two albums dropped on the same day and unleashed a seemingly endless plethora of jaw-dropping music. Those Illusions were packed to the gills with killer tunes. 

[Billy Cundy]

2 minutes ago, smokingarthur said:

Well said, this is absolutely true. Nevertheless, all those bizarre inclusions in the Illusions don’t detract from the fact that those two albums dropped on the same day and unleashed a seemingly endless plethora of jaw-dropping music. Those Illusions were packed to the gills with killer tunes. 

Also absolutely true… Estranged came on the radio the other day. Sang along at the top of my lungs ‘til it ended. Full 8 minutes. Not many bands can make people do that!

[PatrickS77]

2 hours ago, Billy Cundy said:

So true. You can tell at this point in their career(s), they just bowed down to whatever weird, uncool decision Axl wanted to shoehorn in. All the ‘deep voice’ adlibs, the sound effects, the bar room piano, the crushing lengths of the tracks. A producers job is to step in and make tough decisions to make songs as tight as possible. Trim the fat and tie everything together. Clink was, I imagine, just demoted to engineer at this point, and Axl was given free reign. 

I love the songs. YCBM, Estranged, Bad Apples, Civil War. There’s some incredible melodies and performances. But yeah, it’ll never be a classic album because it’s hard to stomach the weirdness. And it’s not ‘weirdness’ in a hip sense like Captain Beefheart, Steely Dan, or King gizzard and the lizard wizard.. it’s weird in the ‘oh man these guys are missing the mark’ kind of way. 
 

 

Blablabla.... millions of people disagree. Those are classic albums.

[allwaystired]

2 hours ago, Billy Cundy said:

So true. You can tell at this point in their career(s), they just bowed down to whatever weird, uncool decision Axl wanted to shoehorn in. All the ‘deep voice’ adlibs, the sound effects, the bar room piano, the crushing lengths of the tracks. A producers job is to step in and make tough decisions to make songs as tight as possible. Trim the fat and tie everything together. Clink was, I imagine, just demoted to engineer at this point, and Axl was given free reign. 

I love the songs. YCBM, Estranged, Bad Apples, Civil War. There’s some incredible melodies and performances. But yeah, it’ll never be a classic album because it’s hard to stomach the weirdness. And it’s not ‘weirdness’ in a hip sense like Captain Beefheart, Steely Dan, or King gizzard and the lizard wizard.. it’s weird in the ‘oh man these guys are missing the mark’ kind of way. 
 

 

Totally disagree. 

A lot of dislike for the UYI albums on here recently, which is surprising. 

Are people basically just fans of AFD then? I don't really get how GNR fans can dislike such a large amount of their released material. 

 

[axlvai]

8 minutes ago, allwaystired said:

Totally disagree. 

A lot of dislike for the UYI albums on here recently, which is surprising. 

Are people basically just fans of AFD then? I don't really get how GNR fans can dislike such a large amount of their released material. 

 

Yeah. Absurd.

[PatrickS77]

26 minutes ago, allwaystired said:

Totally disagree. 

A lot of dislike for the UYI albums on here recently, which is surprising. 

Are people basically just fans of AFD then? I don't really get how GNR fans can dislike such a large amount of their released material. 

 

Not even that. Some are fans of CD.

[RedHook]

UYI was the embarrassing Era.

Some good songs in between the parade of power ballads, and million dollar cheese ball videos, background singers, and the fact that the only one upbeat original was released as a single.

And the UYI's Era was more Hair Metalish than even AFD, .... while the rest of the world was going in the opposite direction. 

It made them look foolish, and dated.

By 1993, in the U.S., it was over for them ,and Fast. 

[PatrickS77]

21 minutes ago, RedHook said:

UYI was the embarrassing Era.

Some good songs in between the parade of power ballads, and million dollar cheese ball videos, background singers, and the fact that the only one upbeat original was released as a single.

And the UYI's Era was more Hair Metalish than even AFD, .... while the rest of the world was going in the opposite direction. 

It made them look foolish, and dated.

By 1993, in the U.S., it was over for them ,and Fast. 

And yet they were the biggest band on the planet from '91 to '93. Must have done something right.

[El Nono Pololo]

2 hours ago, PatrickS77 said:

Blablabla.... millions of people disagree. Those are classic albums.

An album can be a classic, and still be flawed. Hell, there's hardly a classic double album by any rock band that's not divisive and that's not accused of having a considerable amount of filler, even by some of their biggest fans.

Since UYI is so much longer than most double albums, I don't see how it can be so surprising to think it has even more filler, especially when the band, by all standards and by their own admission, was starting to disintegrate. If members of the band themselves were unhappy with the production and with some of the songs included, why can't we?

Also, what could possibly NOT be deemed "blablabla" on a GNR forum???

[jamillos]

There are no fillers, only some songs are not as good as the best ones, which is rather logical when you release 30 songs all at once. It must have been a blast of a creative energy. I suspect a lot of people here do the same as people do on the internet these days: anything older than 20–30 years is now suddenly "cringe" or at least somehow flawed. It’s bullshit, and it speaks of a lack of humbleness and insight. These folks don’t realize that by the same logic, they’ll be looked at as cringe in the future as well. 
UYI is an awesome piece of music; it represents the band exactly where it was at that time, and it represents the 90s themselves. Nobody at that time did the same thing like they did with UYI, not to mention all the videos and the mammoth tour. Look at KOHD, for instance. Would they include this song on an album now? No. But was it, nevertheless, great back then, and did they make a behemoth of it during the UYI tour? Fuck yeah. And nobody batted an eyelid. Nobody was standing in the audience, thinking: "Gee, I hope this won't look 'dated' to some very cool people in the future," while Axl was running around the stage and Slash destroying the strings during the solo. 
And what are these "fillers" then anyway? Name them, please. Bad Apples? Nah, it was a nice trip to somewhere else, and quite a good one. DC alt. lyrics? Some say they’re better than the original ones. Shotgun Blues? Fuck off, this was one of the songs that represented then GNR the most to me (though I was about 10). The Izzy songs? Some people seem to love him so much. I look at the track lists and wouldn’t want a single song to have been omitted, you clowns. Even My World is like just a little joke for the end, although yeah, we could have done without that one, couldn’t we. 
In short, the double album is the absolute peak of GNR, having evolved from the original AfD era/band. But I suppose there are some strict AfD fanatics – after all, there are some strict CD fanatics as well! UYI is deep and kicks ass at the same time. A huge project that showed the full potential of the band at the time. One of the best pieces of rock music out there. 

Edited August 25, 2022 by jamillos

[Towelie]

4 hours ago, RedHook said:

UYI was the embarrassing Era.

Some good songs in between the parade of power ballads, and million dollar cheese ball videos, background singers, and the fact that the only one upbeat original was released as a single.

And the UYI's Era was more Hair Metalish than even AFD, .... while the rest of the world was going in the opposite direction. 

It made them look foolish, and dated.

By 1993, in the U.S., it was over for them ,and Fast. 

Sure, UYI were the embarrassing era, not 2000-2022. 🙄

[SoulMonster]

It's not strange there would be fillers on an album where the band just decided to release all they had, which is the case with UYIs. Part of the reason was that they didn't agree on what songs to include so they ended up with just included everything. Not everything could be equally good. But this is all subjective, if people think all songs on the UYIs are good or great, more power to them. Personally, there are songs there I would never listen to because I cringe just hearing them.

My main problem with the UYIs isn't that they have many fillers (my opinion), I can just skip fillers, but how songs that could have been better were marred by poor decisions and a band that didn't work together anymore. I remember how disappointing it was to go from Appetite where all the songs had been played and formed through live shows and where all players had contributed, to songs on UYIs that were clearly written not with but for the band by individual members. I remember listening to UYIs for the first time back there in '91, it wasn't the same band anymore. Most of all, I missed the Izzy and Slash guitar interplay that was so prominent on Appetite. Those two guitars that played their own parts, distinctly, a result of guitar players having to compromise and finding ways to mesh together. On UYIs, Izzy was barely present, he submitted song ideas (like the rest of the guys) but he rarely worked out guitar parts with Slash as on Appetite and when you listen to UYIs a lot of what you hear is Slash's lead (great as it is) with fairly nondescript rhythm either played by Slash or Izzy. It lacked that interwoven guitar playing where you felt each guitarist tried to grab your attention.

And with each band members contributing song idea that to a much lesser extent was GN'R-fied by the rest of the band through rehearsals with all present or through live performances, UYIs became a mix of various styles and directions. It was a bit in shambles. Individually, some of the songs are brilliant, but it was all over the place. Both Spaghetti and Chinese are in that sense much better records than UYI, although many of the songs themselves are worse. At least they feel like records made by a cohesive band, or at least there is a cohesive thought behind them.

And the good songs were often let down by poor decisions (again, my subjective opinion).

And finally, the production/mixing/sound has become a lot more dated than Appetite. In a weird sense, Appetite still feels kind of fresh, although it is obvious old times music. whereas the UYIs just feels old in a wrong way. 

I guess all of this is subjective, and again, there are lots of great songs on those albums, but if they had worked on them like them did on the songs on Appetite, if they had cut away the fat, and if they had produced them the same way as they did with Appetite, then I think UYI could have gone down in history as a classic like Appetite, and not like the hot mess it is considered today. It might have been up there with Appetite today, and not considered a disappointment.

Edited August 25, 2022 by SoulMonster

[Hollyangel]

1 hour ago, jamillos said:

There are no fillers, only some songs are not as good as the best ones, which is rather logical when you release 30 songs all at once. It must have been a blast of a creative energy. I suspect a lot of people here do the same as people do on the internet these days: anything older than 20–30 years is now suddenly "cringe" or at least somehow flawed. It’s bullshit, and it speaks of a lack of humbleness and insight. These folks don’t realize that by the same logic, they’ll be looked at as cringe in the future as well. 
UYI is an awesome piece of music; it represents the band exactly where it was at that time, and it represents the 90s themselves. Nobody at that time did the same thing like they did with UYI, not to mention all the videos and the mammoth tour. Look at KOHD, for instance. Would they include this song on an album now? No. But was it, nevertheless, great back then, and did they make a behemoth of it during the UYI tour? Fuck yeah. And nobody bat an eyelid. Nobody was standing in the audience, thinking: "Gee, I hope this won't look 'dated' to some very cool people in the future," while Axl was running around the stage and Slash destroying the strings during the solo. 
And what are these "fillers" then anyway? Name them, please. Bad Apples? Nah, it was a nice trip to somewhere else, and quite a good one. DC alt. lyrics? Some say they’re better than the original ones. Shotgun Blues? Fuck off, this was one of the songs that represented then GNR the most to me (though I was about 10). The Izzy songs? Some people seem to love him so much. I look at the track lists and wouldn’t want a single song to have been omitted, you clowns. Even My World is like just a little joke for the end, although yeah, we could have done without that one, couldn’t we. 
In short, the double album is the absolute peak of GNR, having evolved from the original AfD era/band. But I suppose there are some strict AfD fanatics – after all, there are some strict CD fanatics as well! UYI is deep and kicks ass at the same time. A huge project that showed the full potential of the band at the time. One of the best pieces of rock music out there. 

Yep that was my era and I loved that music.  It was the soundtrack of where I was in my life.   I also liked Nirvana, RHCP, Pearl Jam, U2 etc but for me GNR still kicked major butt, power ballads, piano and all.  Dated is a matter of opinion.  Some of that music will never date for me.  Same for a lot of music from the previous eras.  Legendary music.

[Billy Cundy]

7 hours ago, PatrickS77 said:

Blablabla.... millions of people disagree. Those are classic albums.

Isn’t ‘blablabla’ the whole point of an Internet forum?

 

[Billy Cundy]

8 hours ago, allwaystired said:

Totally disagree. 

A lot of dislike for the UYI albums on here recently, which is surprising. 

Are people basically just fans of AFD then? I don't really get how GNR fans can dislike such a large amount of their released material. 

 

No, look, I’m talking from a production point of view. I’m just someone who’s interested in that kind of songcraft/arranging side of it. I personally (my opinion is just my opinion), the albums, as a whole, are too whacky and at points, OTT and juvenile. Gimme a cohesive 8 track album any day (just my preference)..

 

ChiDem is a more purposeful and cohesive album.. Appetite is one of THE most cohesive and satisfying LPs of all time. 
 

They’ve already released UYI though, I think, so I don’t think they’re gonna change it for my benefit now. What I WILL say is their choices of covers on the albums were pretty genius because they really pulled off the old Van Halen trick of making them entirely their own. 

[Billy Cundy]

2 hours ago, SoulMonster said:

It's not strange there would be fillers on an album where the band just decided to release all they had, which is the case with UYIs. Part of the reason was that they didn't agree on what songs to include so they ended up with just included everything. Not everything could be equally good. But this is all subjective, if people think all songs on the UYIs are good or great, more power to them. Personally, there are songs there I would never listen to because I cringe just hearing them.

My main problem with the UYIs isn't that they have many fillers (my opinion), I can just skip fillers, but how songs that could have been better were marred by poor decisions and a band that didn't work together anymore. I remember how disappointing it was to go from Appetite where all the songs had been played and formed through live shows and where all players had contributed, to songs on UYIs that were clearly written not with but for the band by individual members. I remember listening to UYIs for the first time back there in '91, it wasn't the same band anymore. Most of all, I missed the Izzy and Slash guitar interplay that was so prominent on Appetite. Those two guitars that played their own parts, distinctly, a result of guitar players having to compromise and finding ways to mesh together. On UYIs, Izzy was barely present, he submitted song ideas (like the rest of the guys) but he rarely worked out guitar parts with Slash as on Appetite and when you listen to UYIs a lot of what you hear is Slash's lead (great as it is) with fairly nondescript rhythm either played by Slash or Izzy. It lacked that interwoven guitar playing where you felt each guitarist tried to grab your attention.

And with each band members contributing song idea that to a much lesser extent was GN'R-fied by the rest of the band through rehearsals with all present or through live performances, UYIs became a mix of various styles and directions. It was a bit in shambles. Individually, some of the songs are brilliant, but it was all over the place. Both Spaghetti and Chinese are in that sense much better records than UYI, although many of the songs themselves are worse. At least they feel like records made by a cohesive band, or at least there is a cohesive thought behind them.

And the good songs were often let down by poor decisions (again, my subjective opinion).

And finally, the production/mixing/sound has become a lot more dated than Appetite. In a weird sense, Appetite still feels kind of fresh, although it is obvious old times music. whereas the UYIs just feels old in a wrong way. 

I guess all of this is subjective, and again, there are lots of great songs on those albums, but if they had worked on them like them did on the songs on Appetite, if they had cut away the fat, and if they had produced them the same way as they did with Appetite, then I think UYI could have gone down in history as a classic like Appetite, and not like the hot mess it is considered today. It might have been up there with Appetite today, and not considered a disappointment.

Right on, preach! This guy gets it.

[allwaystired]

1 hour ago, Billy Cundy said:

No, look, I’m talking from a production point of view. I’m just someone who’s interested in that kind of songcraft/arranging side of it. I personally (my opinion is just my opinion), the albums, as a whole, are too whacky and at points, OTT and juvenile. Gimme a cohesive 8 track album any day (just my preference)..

 

ChiDem is a more purposeful and cohesive album.. Appetite is one of THE most cohesive and satisfying LPs of all time. 
 

They’ve already released UYI though, I think, so I don’t think they’re gonna change it for my benefit now. What I WILL say is their choices of covers on the albums were pretty genius because they really pulled off the old Van Halen trick of making them entirely their own. 

Oh, it's totally fair enough you think that. Opinions are opinions after all.

I'd still disagree on the production though- I think it's great! 

UYI 2 is my favourite album of all time, by some distance, so I'll always go to bat for it! 

[El Guapo]

1 hour ago, allwaystired said:

Oh, it's totally fair enough you think that. Opinions are opinions after all.

I'd still disagree on the production though- I think it's great! 

UYI 2 is my favourite album of all time, by some distance, so I'll always go to bat for it! 

It's definately very different coming from AFD, maybe we can simply agree on that?

I love both UYI and AFD for what they are.

[El Nono Pololo]

5 hours ago, jamillos said:

There are no fillers, only some songs are not as good as the best ones, which is rather logical when you release 30 songs all at once. It must have been a blast of a creative energy. I suspect a lot of people here do the same as people do on the internet these days: anything older than 20–30 years is now suddenly "cringe" or at least somehow flawed. It’s bullshit, and it speaks of a lack of humbleness and insight. These folks don’t realize that by the same logic, they’ll be looked at as cringe in the future as well. 
UYI is an awesome piece of music; it represents the band exactly where it was at that time, and it represents the 90s themselves. Nobody at that time did the same thing like they did with UYI, not to mention all the videos and the mammoth tour. Look at KOHD, for instance. Would they include this song on an album now? No. But was it, nevertheless, great back then, and did they make a behemoth of it during the UYI tour? Fuck yeah. And nobody batted an eyelid. Nobody was standing in the audience, thinking: "Gee, I hope this won't look 'dated' to some very cool people in the future," while Axl was running around the stage and Slash destroying the strings during the solo. 
And what are these "fillers" then anyway? Name them, please. Bad Apples? Nah, it was a nice trip to somewhere else, and quite a good one. DC alt. lyrics? Some say they’re better than the original ones. Shotgun Blues? Fuck off, this was one of the songs that represented then GNR the most to me (though I was about 10). The Izzy songs? Some people seem to love him so much. I look at the track lists and wouldn’t want a single song to have been omitted, you clowns. Even My World is like just a little joke for the end, although yeah, we could have done without that one, couldn’t we. 
In short, the double album is the absolute peak of GNR, having evolved from the original AfD era/band. But I suppose there are some strict AfD fanatics – after all, there are some strict CD fanatics as well! UYI is deep and kicks ass at the same time. A huge project that showed the full potential of the band at the time. One of the best pieces of rock music out there. 

Blablabla... millions of people disagree. Those are flawed albums.

[jamillos]

41 minutes ago, El Nono Pololo said:

Blablabla... millions of people disagree. Those are flawed albums.

Blablabla - great argument. Millions of people agree also. Every album on this planet may be considered flawed.  

[El Nono Pololo]

7 minutes ago, jamillos said:

Blablabla - great argument. Millions of people agree also. Every album on this planet may be considered flawed.  

I was just quoting Patrick577 for a joke. I see your points, I just strongly disagree, that's all.

In fact, it's those glaring flaws, that what-could-have-been-ism about UYI that makes me think so much about it, I guess. In fact, that applies to GNR as a whole. This thread wouldn't be 700 pages long and counting otherwise.

If Guns was a normal band we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves.

 

[allwaystired]

1 hour ago, El Guapo said:

It's definately very different coming from AFD, maybe we can simply agree on that?

I love both UYI and AFD for what they are.

Oh very different for sure. I'd call it 'progression' though.

I'd have thought back then no-one wanted a rehash of AFD.....but given the way nostalgia has now consumed much of the industry, I'd imagine that's exactly what people want these days! 

 

[Flayer]

I love Use Your Illusion but those records could definitely benefit from a remastering. You’ve got all of Izzy’s buried guitar parts, so many tracks with barely audible bass, others with all these out of whack vocal layers.

[Sweersa]

2 minutes ago, Flayer said:

I love Use Your Illusion but those records could definitely benefit from a remastering. You’ve got all of Izzy’s buried guitar parts, so many tracks with barely audible bass, others with all these out of whack vocal layers.

I'd like a CD remaster with all of Bucket's parts back to replace Bumble's guitars that replaced his parts, and the bass guitar turned up a bit like in the Village mixes.

[fabrph5]

12 hours ago, RedHook said:

UYI was the embarrassing Era.

Some good songs in between the parade of power ballads, and million dollar cheese ball videos, background singers, and the fact that the only one upbeat original was released as a single.

And the UYI's Era was more Hair Metalish than even AFD, .... while the rest of the world was going in the opposite direction. 

It made them look foolish, and dated.

By 1993, in the U.S., it was over for them ,and Fast. 

you obviously werent old enough to experience it.  None of what you said is true.  The albums were VERY well received and were followed up by massively successful tours.  I was lucky enough to be the right age