fair to say the album has gotten a good response in boston

BOSTON HERALD

What are the dudes who said Guns N’ Roses doesn’t work without Slash going to do now?

First things first. “Chinese Democracy” is great - you can hear it right now as a free stream on MySpace [website] and buy it Sunday at BestBuy. It’s not “Appetite for Destruction,” but it’s way more consistent than the bloated “Use Your Illusions.”

Forget that we’ve chased the carrot of new G N’ R tunes Axl Rose has cruelly dangled before us for 17 years. Forget that this is likely the most expensive album ever made at a reported $13 million. Forget that the cast from “Appetite” is long gone. Just listen and you’ll hear the awesome opus Rose intended “Illusion” to be. Because Slash, Izzy Stradlin and the rest ruined Rose’s vision of “Illusion,” “Chinese Democracy” is defined by their absence.

“Chinese Democracy” succeeds because Slash is missing. Slash fans need to face facts: the guitarist was never right for Rose (too much Joe Perry, not enough Brian May); post-“Appetite,” he’s consistently failed to capture his early mad-hatter-run-amok fury.

The guitarists on “Chinese Democracy” - Buckethead, Bumblefoot, Richard Fortus, Robin Finck and Paul Tobias - use Slash’s dirty blues as a starting point but take it places G N’ R’s iconic axe-man could never, and would never, want to go. And the results are wicked cool.

“I.R.S.” tilts between a gentle lilt and a classic “Appetite” grind. Beneath the lilt are lyrical blues lines. Over the top of the grind are supernovas that reference Tom Morello, Yngwie Malmsteen, Vernon Reid and Slash, too. “Scraped,” “Better” and “If the World,” all vaguely electronic, use this same approach: bursts of straight, lyrical rock guitar, bursts of fast, twisted notes that sound like they’re coming from a malfunctioning cyborg.

The absence you notice most is Stradlin.. G N’ R’s second guitarist wrote the band’s straightest rock songs (“Patience,” “Mr. Brownstone,” “Think About You”). No Izzy means no good Stones’ cops. And because Rose doesn’t do simple well without Stradlin, the weakest tracks on “Chinese Democracy” are its most typical, specifically the title track and “Shackler’s Revenge.”

But no Izzy means Rose is free to write what he wants: sagas equal to his best “Illusion” experiments. Half of “Chinese Democracy” consists of big, bold, piano-driven operettas directed at his old band mates, himself and his haters.

“Sometimes I feel like the world is on top of me/breaking me down with an endless monotony,” Rose sings on “Scraped.” Then he adds, “like a daily affirmation, I am unconquerable.”

So what’s Rose retained from his past life? His Queen fascination is in full bloom. His wicked yowls, howls and growls remain intact, and his obsession with “Cool Hand Luke” has held - this time incongruously paired with Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” sound bites and Kashmir-like strings on “Madagascar.”

Oh, and there’s his ego. Now everybody knows Slash wasn’t the genius in the band.

Download the brooding, black, brilliantly un-“Appetite” tell-off, “Sorry.”

http://bostonherald.com/entertainment/m … id=1133834

BOSTON GLOBE

When it comes to Guns N' Roses' 13-years-in-the-making "Chinese Democracy," out today, there's really only one question that matters: Was it worth the wait?

The answer has to be no, of course not, how could it be? That said, it's an exhilarating album. Seriously, after finally hearing these 14 tracks in their finished form I was so energized I wanted to climb a mountain. I felt a grudging admiration for Axl Rose's tortured artistry - and could almost imagine forgiving his make-'em-wait diva attitude at shows.

"Democracy" may not have the metal band's classic lineup, but lone original GNR member and group mastermind Rose has crafted the kind of record that makes superlatives tumble like a waterfall: exciting, urgent, frenzied, heavy, melodic, quirky, melodramatic, and occasionally overbaked. It demands that you hit the repeat button after the first listen for both the hard-rocking highs and the head-scratching lows. In other words, it's everything you want - and a little you don't.

Happily, Rose and his coterie of co-writers retain some of the hallmarks of 1987's "Appetite for Destruction" and 1991's twin "Use Your Illusion" albums.

Melt-your-face guitar solos? Check out the attack on the title track and the lumbering "I.R.S.," blistering guitar courtesy of Robin Finck and Bucket-head.

Candied, singable pop melodies wrapped in barbed-wire arrangements? Listen to the catchy hook and heated wah-wah guitar licks of "Better."

Left-field experiments just crazy enough to work? Consider the combo of delicate 12-string acoustic flights and deep bass funk of "If the World."

And Rose does it all without sounding as if he's been hermetically sealed off from the rest of popular music (witness the hip-hop-tinged rhythm tracks) or forgotten his own history (behold the throwback machine gun riffage).

As vital as "Democracy" is, the labor-intensiveness of the process is evident in the instruments piled on top of one another. Given this appetite for construction, it's easy to envision Rose huddled over a mixing board punching in the tangled guitar solos, windswept orchestral passages, and layers of backing vocals with a maniacal Frankenstein-ian glee. But at least the singer-songwriter and his army of engineers and musicians managed to keep the basic outline of the songs discernible through the clutter.

The biggest obstacle to unadulterated enjoyment may be Rose's voice. The familiar high-pitched caterwaul now more pinched and mottled comes as a shock after so many years without it. And he takes it through different modulations, mostly on the lower end, over the course of the album. One minute he's the familiar bratty ranter on the frenetic "Scraped," the next he's affecting some weird, Ozzy-post-etiquette-training elocution on "Street of Dreams." (The song itself is pretty sweet, though: a grandiose, Elton John-style piano ballad with an intimate sentiment).

There are those who had given up caring if the album would ever surface, but now that Rose has finally decided to spread "Democracy" around, it's a pleasant surprise to find how welcome it is.

http://www.boston.com/ae/music/cd_revie … ins_vital/

the point of it is that MTV makes a point of making their opinion known, like it is going to matter to any potential CD buyers.

people that think GNR need Hinders fan base to be relevant these days are out of touch.

hinders fanbase consists of 16 year old girls who heard "lips of an angel" on the radio and thought it was cute. that is it. rock fans generally disregard this band. trust me. i'm sure i'm a lot younger than a lot of you.

ok sure then find me universal disagreement about some of the songs bono mentioned

Dust N Bones
Garden of Eden
14 Years
Pretty Tied Up
So Fine (Which has a cult-like following believe it or not)

all that i was saying with my post was that one mans filler is another mans classic.