{"id":374,"date":"2008-11-29T14:05:32","date_gmt":"2008-11-29T19:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.themetalden.com\/?p=374"},"modified":"2009-05-31T22:11:51","modified_gmt":"2009-06-01T03:11:51","slug":"metal-news-source-tmd-newsbrewtal-south-entertainment-presents-southern-metal-mayhem-1%c2%a0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themetalden.com\/?p=374","title":{"rendered":"ROCKET REVIEW: GUNS N&#8217; ROSES &#8211; &#8220;Chinese Democracy&#8221; (CD\/LP)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><center><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Chinese Democracy\" src=\"http:\/\/i3.photobucket.com\/albums\/y55\/RSCODY\/l_895f7be345fb85cb8e2a72ac74fbd22f.jpg?t=1227140254\" alt=\"Chinese Democracy\" width=\"250\" height=\"246\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"TMD Rocks!\" src=\"http:\/\/i66.photobucket.com\/albums\/h259\/rsid999\/tmdcom.jpg\" alt=\"TMD Rocks!\" width=\"300\" height=\"31\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s only taken seventeen years for the gunner dictator W. Axl Rose to deliver an original studio album. Well, was it worth the wait? This reviewer  just wants to be frank as possible after listening to all the songs offered up here, albeit as painful as it is to come to the staggering realization that this  isn\u2019t the Guns N&#8217; Roses we all came to know and love in the late 80&#8217;s into the  early 90&#8217;s, thanks mainly due in part to their gritty 1987 debut masterwork  <em>Appetite for Destruction<\/em>, featuring the howling, street-inspired  &#8220;Welcome To The Jungle\u201d, and impart the harsh reality of the situation: <em>Chinese Democracy<\/em> is a major disappointment on too many levels to even  go into. None of the original G N&#8217; R band members appear on this collection of  mainly synth\u2019d out, &#8216;easy listening&#8217; ballads. No more Slash. No More Duff. No  more Izzy.  \u00a0 This in all reality &#8211; whether William Bruce Rose, Jr. wants to admit it  or not &#8211; is a solo album that in essence comes off sounding more like a modern  day disco project that maybe Olivia Newton John and The Bee Gee\u2019s would\u2019ve  produced together than anything truly resembling a hard rock record. However, if  that\u2019s what you\u2019re into, the crappy corporate assembled pop acts that are fed into the radio-monopolized machine that is drowning the music industry today and  choking-out unique artists in place of mindless, self-aggrandizing fodder such  as this, then you\u2019ll definitely be a fan of Axl&#8217;s product. While <em>Chinese  Democracy <\/em>at times is certainly reminiscent of<em> Use Your Illusion 1  &amp;2\u2019<\/em><em>s<\/em> epic songwriting with its heavy-handed, all out sappy, clusterfuck of a production, what you ultimately get with most of the tracks on <em>Chinese Democracy<\/em> is nothing like anything that\u2019s ever been heard from  Guns N Roses before, no matter who is in the band. For most of its running time,  it even becomes increasingly harder to recognize Rose\u2019s vocals. Honestly, it sounds like he\u2019s spent too much time alone on the piano in anti-depressant-laced  seclusion listening to Boz Scaggs. For a man who once represented something very  important with his critical, \u2018anti-mainstream\u2019 stance, Axl Rose has now  literally all these years later morphed into nothing more than a member of what film writer Whit Stillman has coined: <em>urban haute bourgeois<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>[starreview tpl=16]<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">ROCKET REVIEW:<\/span><\/strong> <strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">GUNS N&#8217; ROSES<\/span><\/strong> <strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-size: small;\">&#8220;Chinese Democracy&#8221;  (CD\/LP)<\/span><\/strong> <strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><\/strong> <strong><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\">(Geffen Records\/2008)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>1. Chinese Democracy<\/p>\n<p>2. Shackler&#8217;s Revenge<\/p>\n<p>3. Better<\/p>\n<p>4. Street  of Dreams<\/p>\n<p>5. If the World<\/p>\n<p>6. There Was a Time<\/p>\n<p>7. Catcher in the  Rye<\/p>\n<p>8. Scraped<\/p>\n<p>9. Riad N&#8217; the Bedouins<\/p>\n<p>10. Sorry<\/p>\n<p>11. I.R.S. 12. Madagascar<\/p>\n<p>13. This I Love<\/p>\n<p>14. Prostitute<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/gunsnroses\">http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/gunsnroses<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Rocket\" src=\"http:\/\/i66.photobucket.com\/albums\/h259\/rsid999\/ROCKETCORE66.jpg\" alt=\"Rocket\" width=\"250\" height=\"240\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s only taken seventeen years for the gunner dictator W. Axl Rose to deliver an&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-metal-reviews","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/themetalden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/themetalden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/themetalden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themetalden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themetalden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/themetalden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/themetalden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themetalden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themetalden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}