Guns 'N Roses - Chinese Democracy (2008)

Chinese Democracy is the sixth studio album by American hard rock band Guns N' Roses, released on November 23, 2008, by Geffen Records. It was the band's first studio album since "The Spaghetti Incident?" (1993), and their first album of original studio material since the simultaneous releases of Use Your Illusion I and II in September 1991. Despite debuting at number three on the Billboard 200 and being certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Chinese Democracy domestically undersold expectations. It received generally favorable reviews from music critics. The album achieved international chart success and has sold over one million copies in Europe.
In 1994, Guns N' Roses' progress on a follow up to The Spaghetti Incident was halted due to creative differences between members. Slash, Duff McKagan, Matt Sorum, and Gilby Clarke all resigned or were fired from the band in the mid '90s.
Vocalist Axl Rose and keyboardist Dizzy Reed were the only members from the previous lineup remaining by the time production had started. A new lineup, consisting of Rose, Reed, guitarists Robin Finck and Paul Tobias, bassist Tommy Stinson, drummer Josh Freese, and keyboardist Chris Pitman began working on the album in 1997. Initially intended to be released in 1999 or 2000, the album was re-recorded completely in 2000. The album was worked on by multiple lineups of the band, including later members Bryan Mantia, Buckethead, Richard Fortus, Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal, and Frank Ferrer.
Personnel and legal reasons, as well as Rose's alleged perfectionism caused the album to be delayed multiple times, including missing an announced March 2007 release date, before being released in November 2008. With production costs reportedly eclipsing $13 million, the album is the most expensive rock album ever produced.
The production is so dense that it's hard to warm to, but it fits the music. These aren't songs that grab and hold; they're songs that unfold, so much so that Chinese Democracy may seem a little underwhelming upon its first listen. It's not just the years of pent-up anticipation, it's that Axl spent so much time creating the music constructing the structure and then filling out the frame that there's no easy way into the album. That, combined with the realization that Axl isn't trying to reinvent GNR, but just finishing what he started on the Illusions, can make Chinese Democracy seem mildly anticlimactic, but Rose spent a decade-plus working on this he deserves to not have it dismissed on a cursory listen. Give it time, listening like it was 1998 and not 2008, and the album does give up some terrific music -- music that is overblown but not overdone.
True, those good moments are the songs that have kicked around the Internet for the entirety of the new millennium: the slinky, spiteful "Better," slowly building into its fury; the quite gorgeous if heavy-handed "Street of Dreams"; "There Was a Time," which overcomes its acronym and lack of chorus on its sheer drama; "Catcher in the Rye," the lightest, brightest moment here; the slow, grinding "I.R.S."; and "Madagascar," a ludicrous rueful rumination that finds space for quotations from Martin Luther King amidst its trip-hop pulse.
These aren't innovations; they're extensions of "Breakdown" and "Estranged," epics that require some work to decode because Axl forces the listener to meet him on his own terms. This all-consuming artistic narcissism has become Rose's defining trait, not letting him move forward, but only to relentlessly explore the same territory over and over again.
And this solipsism turns Chinese Democracy into something strangely, surprisingly simple: it won't change music, it won't change any lives, it's just 14 more songs about loneliness and persecution. Or as Axl put it in an apology for canceled concerts in 2006, "In the end, it's just an album." And it's a good album, no less and no more.

Track lising

01.  "Chinese Democracy"  - 4:43
02.  "Shackler's Revenge"  - 3:37
03.  "Better"   - 4:58
04.  "Street of Dreams"  - 4:46
05.  "If the World"  - 4:54
06.  "There Was a Time" - 6:41
07.  "Catcher in the Rye" - 5:53
08.  "Scraped"  - 3:30
09.  "Riad N' the Bedouins"  - 4:10
10.  "Sorry"   - 6:14
11.  "I.R.S." - 4:28
12.  "Madagascar"  - 5:38
13.  "This I Love"  - 5:34
14.  "Prostitute"  - 6:15

All lyrics written by Axl Rose. 

Credits
Axl Rose – lead vocals, keyboards, synthesizers, piano, guitar
Robin Finck – guitar, keyboards, acoustic guitar
Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal – guitar
Chris Pitman – sub-bass, keyboards, synthesizers, bass and drum programming, backing vocals, twelve-string guitar, drum machine and string machine, mellotron
Tommy Stinson – bass, backing vocals, arrangements
Dizzy Reed – keyboards, backing vocals, synthesizers, piano
Bryan "Brain" Mantia – drums, arrangements, drum machine and drum programming
Buckethead – guitar, acoustic guitar, arrangements
Paul Tobias – guitar, piano, arrangements
Richard Fortus – guitar
Frank Ferrer – drums
Josh Freese – arrangements

Additional musicians
Marco Beltrami – orchestra and arrangements
Paul Buckmaster – orchestra and arrangements
Suzy Katayama – arrangements, French horn
Sebastian Bach – backing vocals
Patti Hood – harp
Engineer – Caram Costanzo
Mixed By – Andy Wallace, Axl Rose, Caram Costanzo
Producer – Axl Rose, Caram Costanzo

Notes
Release date: November 23, 2008
Recorded: 1997–2007, Battery Studios, Bennett House, Can-Am Recorders, Capitol Studios, Cherokee Studios, Electric Lady Studios, IGA Studios, Studio at The Palms, Rumbo Recorders, Soundtrack Studios, Sunset Sound Recorders, The Town House, The Village, Woodland Ranch
Genre:  Hard rock ·
Length: 71:18
© 2008

Label - Geffen/Black Frog