I hear ya. The guy is almost dead, creatively speaking. I'm a huge NIN fan, The Downward Spiral is among my very favourite 10 albums, but his last good record was Fragile. He's still been very active since then, but the music lacks and he doesn't really have anything to say anymore. It's just the "a song for NIN fans" routine in NIN cliches.

I don't think that any memorable could come from a supposed collaboration, although some people here acted like even Blood in the Water would have been something amazing. So it'd have dozens of fans. But not more.

Well, Axl was great, full of venom, full of anger, full of energy, full of message. But the music sucked. It was horrible. A badly written, uninspired song, with some out-of-tune guitars here and there. Even if they had promoted it a lot, it would have gone to the same place, the garbage can.

But. I think after all these years Axl must have some material worth releasing. I'm not a fan of CD, but hey, even an album in that quality would be better than jerking with CD remixes and tribute tours. Sadly enough, I'm afraid Axl burnt out a long time ago. He had been struggling creatively for years, partly because he had to realize he wasn't Guns N' Roses himself, partly because he's bipolar in everything - sometimes a maximalist, sometimes a lazy ass, sometimes overconfident, sometimes insecure. Those recording years sucked the energy out of him, combined with the was against the label. Anyway, I think he's done and the only thing we can hope is the CD2 album in some years.

Leaks:

The acoustic Better was interesting, it'd be a gem as a B-side or on a remix album. I really liked the music, it was very creative how they turned that electric stuff into this soft and clean, alive music. Axl's vocals were hurting though sometimes. With less music going around, it screamed for rerecording. I haven't noticed till now that some of the Better vocals are Street of Dreams/Madagascar cathegory bad.

DJ Better. I liked the different intro, but the rest only took away from the album version. The most frightening thing is that they reworked an already released song!   Makes me wonder if those rumours were true and Axl really wanted to rework and rerelease CD in 2009.   If they're still tinkering with the CD songs, then I don't know when to expect a new creative era.

Goin' Down. Sounds like more of an Izzy solo song than a Tommy tune, but I wouldn't say it's not a Tommy song. I'm not a 14 Years fan, but this one makes 14Ys epic. Pretty forgettable. The solo is awul, out of place, out of style. Goin' Down and Silkworms on the same album would be more eclectic than Duff's drunk solo self-belief album. I don't know why they go back to this music style without Slash and Izzy, it can only be worse than the original. The only good thing was that, like others mentioned, it sounded like something organic, and not some cut-and-paste lifeless tinkering through the ages.

Anyway, at least there is something.

It is what it is, a poor remix. I agree that it's so below average, that a 12-year old could have done in his room.

However, I don't understand how anyone could expect something magnificent from this stuff - remix albums are usually either very repetitive or full of "experimental" electronica, something a NIN or Skrillex fan would probably like, but not for guitar/piano music lovers. Anyway, remixes can sound good, sometimes better than the original song, like Manson's Horrible People vs. The Beautiful People. This is not the case with Blood in the Water, but the rest can be different. I don't think it could be worse than this.

BTW I don't get why they were jerking with this kind of shit, when they can't even get an album done in years/decades. Maybe the unfocused working method is another issue besides Axl's terrible working ethic, laziness and the lack of good ideas.

+ NICK CAVE!!