To paraphrase another of rock's foremost procrastinators, Axl Rose just wasn't made for these times. Sure, armchair psychology and Axl Rose is a tired combination but it stands to reason that the only remaining original Guns N' Roses member expected Chinese Democracy to garner a 1990s-style brand-name reception: MTV would block off hours at a time to premiere its videos, fans desperate for real rock would line up at Sam Goodys nationwide for the midnight record release, and school would be forsaken to blast it on speakers the size of Greg Oden. Instead, "Shackler's Revenge" debuted on a video game, as if Gn'R were just some chump band on the come-up (or Aerosmith), and the album's world premiere found it meekly whispering through tinny computer speakers from a very un-rock MySpace page.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of Chinese Democracy is that it's about the fifth-most shocking Guns N' Roses album. Sure, it's difficult to endure both Use Your Illusions in one sitting, but there's something fascinating about how the bombastically lonely "Estranged" could share disc space with the junior-high politicking of "Civil War", "Yesterdays"' concise, sepia-toned pop, and the critic-baiting tantrum "Get in the Ring". Had that record been a career-ender, it would've been a fitting finale. Instead, Axl took 17 years to, we hoped, explore new textures, manipulate songwriting conventions, seek out challenging collaborators, or delve into unfamiliar genres for inspiration. Yet on the way to being this decade's Sgt. Peppers, Chinese Democracy became its Be Here Now-- a record of relatively simple, similar songs overdubbed into a false sense of complexity in a horrorshow of modern production values.
Fans have long complained about Guns N' Roses still existing in the absence of Slash, Izzy, and even Duff, partially out of their talents, partially out of their iconography, and partially because there's no evidence Axl was an auteur figure who could work without his supporting cast. Judging from the personnel involved in the making of Chinese Democracy-- there were 18 musicians in all, not including orchestra players or the more than 30 who provided engineering and ProTools assistance-- it may be more appropriate now to think of Guns N' Roses as a free-floating creative project, even while the music itself suggests a more corporeal entity: The title track, after opening on a seemingly-interminable fade-in (it's been 17 years, another minute gonna kill ya?), pummels your ears with brickwalled, textureless power chords, the first of what seems like thousands of wah solos, and a xylophone. Initially, it's exciting to hear modern rock rendered in such operatic largesse, but the track ultimately proves insubstantial, a middle-aged symphony to nowhere.
This is generally how the rockers go on Chinese Democracy, clocking in at anywhere from nearly five minutes to just over five minutes, using those minor-third/flatted-fifth riffs co-opted by far shittier bands in Gn'R's absence. You also get a couple of piano-led ballads aiming at radio stations that don't exist anymore, while songs like "Catcher in the Rye" and "This I Love" conjure Journey and REO Speedwagon, except you can't really sing along to them. There is, however, a level of craftsmanship that salvages Chinese Democracy as a listening experience-- Axl's voice sounds surprisingly great, and even "Shackler's Revenge" has an ultrasheen gloss that particularly benefits its chorus. The problem lies with Axl’s creative direction: That same song is derailed by a grinding arrangement that suggests he's still looking to Korn records for inspiration.
It's that flaw which ultimately delivers the fatal blow. Even if Chinese Democracy had dropped a decade previous, it would still sound dated. 1996 appears to be the cut-off point for sonic inspiration, a time when the height of electronic and rock synergy in pop music involved having an acoustic guitar and a drum machine on the same track. Fans deserve better than hearing Axl trying to fight with post-NIN nobodies like Stabbing Westward and Gravity Kills for ideas. "Better" and the closing "Prostitute" feature memorable, fluid melodies, but are tied to rudimentary Roland tracks that Steven Adler could've replicated in his sleep, and while "I.R.S." sports an Illusion-sized chorus, it's dampened by empty conspiracy theorizing.
To that point, Chinese Democracy is inevitably and sadly limited in scope to the actual making of Chinese Democracy. Apart from a handful of appropriately vague love songs, Axl seems convinced that the only thing that's mattered to us over the past 17 years was anticipating whether "Riad and the Bedouins" might ever see its proper release. Anyone outside of Axl's inner circle appears lumped into some royal "you" and thrust into a meta exercise to be held up as evidence of a defiantly achieved victory: "All things are possible/ I am unstoppable," "No one ever told me when I was alone/ They just thought I'd know better," and most pointedly, "It was a long time for you/ It was a long time for me/ It'd be a long time for anyone/ But looks like it was meant to be."
Strangely, Chinese Democracy comes off like the inverse of the record it will likely finish behind on the week's Billboard chart, Kanye West's 808s and Heartbreak-- one terribly protracted and isolated, the other dashed off and intensely personal. And yet, both feel humanizing in proving that even megacelebrities can deal with life-altering pain and expectations and still have little to say about it.
In an April Fools' review of Chinese Democracy written two years ago, Chuck Klosterman suggested that if it wasn't the greatest album ever released, it would be seen as a complete failure. Chinese Democracy needed to be a spectacle-- something that either validated its tortuous birthing process or a Hindenberg so horribly panned it would somehow validate Rose as a misunderstood genius. Instead, it's simply a prosaic letdown, constructed by a revolving cast of misfits ultimately led astray by a control freak with unlimited funding and no clear purpose, who even now remains more myth than artist.
