Twenty years ago, adolescents the world over were growing their hair, squeezing into leopard-skin tights, and shrieking their hearts out to Welcome To The Jungle. How times have changed. Nowadays, these teenage rebels have accepted the futility of ‘sticking it to the man’ and have depressingly become accountants, lawyers, and teachers. Not Axl Rose though.
The howling leader of Guns and Roses has spent the last 17 years of his life creating Chinese Democracy, allegedly costing him $14 million. Unfortunately, the drugs and STD’s seem to have taken their toll on poor Axl and all he has created is an epic mess of shite.
Without Slash’s blistering melodic masterpieces of riffs, licks and solos; the songs are boring, lifeless and constantly interrupted by whiney and directionless fret-wanking. Even Axl, the only original member can’t recreate the intense vocals that previously shook stadiums to their core. What was once a visceral howl, electrifying and youthful, has now become a painful cry for help, desperately pleading to whoever’s squeezing his testicles.
The lyrics do offer some amusement. Midway through opener Chinese Democracy, Axl asserts the bizarre metaphor “I’ve got more masturbation, Even with your iron fist.” I’m not sure what this means, but considering he looks a bit like a rapist, I don’t think I want to know.
Since John Lydon’s butter advert, rockstars seem to be destroying their reputations. It begs the question “why can’t rockstars start dying young again?” If only we had instigated a mass cull before Axl Rose had any ambition to go solo, perhaps then the world would never have been subjected to these 14 songs of turgid, irrelevant, and utterly depressing dross.