It was a NIN crew playground.

There was Sean Beavan, fresh off replacing Trent Reznor as the producer of the All-American Antichrist, Marilyn Manson, culling an impressive glam-rock album out of Mechanical Animals. Engineering was done by Critter, a former Chicago Trax Records employee, who ran the tape when Al Jourgensen of Ministry stated that Jesus built his hotrod. Guitars were naturally twanged by the NIN lead guitarist, Robin Finck, iconographised in a mud-soaked, vicious live performance in Woodstock '94. Fittingly, he was found in a circus. Matt Sorum pointed him out to Axl and name-dropped him as Reznor's top dog. Axl went hmmmm and Matt's bigged his role in the story ever since Robin was hired.

Chris Vrenna from NIN had been jamming with Dave Abbruzesse from Pearl Jam. They both played drums. Axl played guitar, powerchords while shoegazing. He was compensating on the self-admitted lack of skill by following on the heels of, say, Kevin Shields from My Bloody Valentine, who currently uses about 30 pedals on stage to achieve a distinct sound.

Of Axl's guitar setup, [Dave] Abbruzzese recalls, "You could hunt buffalo with his rig. It had a lot of lights, a lot of blinking lights, a lot of things that you stepped on. It sounded like a freight train that was somehow playable." (Rolling Stone, 05/11/00)

Tape was rolling. ChiDem, The Blues, If the World, TWAT, Riad, IRS, Maddy, Prostitute... Atlas Shrugged, the glam-rock November Rain. Which insinuates a song on the long side with orchestration. And a Brian May solo. (Fear not. Ron's said he's done some work on it since.)

There were also the more experimental bits. Silk Worms. Oklahoma, an instrumental musing on how Axl reflected those killed in the bombing while sitting across the desk of the original Sweet Child, Erin Everly. In a divorce litigation. He was blown both financially and emotionally, and could relate to those losing their loved ones in an abrupt and horrific manner.

That's not a very industrial album, Axl. OMG, produced in the same era, fits that bill. SCOM from the rerecorded AFD doesn't. Axl was saying OMG was on the more industrial end of the song spectrum, but the song grew to represent the entire album, and with the above songs in question, the description doesn't really do justice to them. But couple that with the crew with those above resumes, and you get where the 'indstrial' Guns album actually comes from, as without actually hearing the material, it can be argued such a thing was a media concotion.

That killed the mood.

Had Robin Williams reintroduced Guns to Hollywood audiences with TIL, Axl would've garnered a lasting merit for his vocal performance. The song would've been a fair-game indicator of the musical direction Guns were pursuing. The songwriting was five years old, something Axl had tinkered on during the Roman holidays of a concert tour; The UYI were so big, even his work-in-progress was a rough-cut diamond, dished out coyishly in grand piano sessions in the studio, and perhaps even on private gatherings.

It's said the director snubbed the song. By the music supervisor. The director is perhaps best remembered as the predecessor to David Fincher on Alien 3. The musical supervisor is now the head of music for Disney/ABC TV Group. Guns' previous soundtrack inclusion, Sympathy for the Devil, was handed-down to the film by David Geffen, bumping the pencilled-down contribution by Gene Loves Jezebel off the list. This was when Geffen was heaving for a new Guns album. The director said no, all else sighed. Oh, really?

The music supervisor meant to say, 'We wanted to have it. Desperately. From a promotional standpoint, the press on the film would've been huge. Axl saw the film and said no. That's something even the studio can't touch. His contract is air-tight.'

Jimmy Iovine decided the raw sound was bad for the album. Said Tommy. Iovine didn't get May to do Catcher and Atlas, or Bucket for If the World and Maddy. Axl was veering away from the Robin sound as his Randy Rhodes bit the hand and went back to Trent. Axl felt had. As if Robin had been in the ChiDem odyssey for a laugh. But seriously, would Robin really had left Guns for NIN if the album release would've been only months away? (Sure. He's done that since.)

It all went more 'classic rock' since, right? Because of Roy Thomas Baker, producer of Bohemian Rhapsody. Only that was in 1975, and at the dawn of the millenia it was actually hard to find any of his later work anywhere near as relevant. Unless you count the debut of Osbourne/Wylde on Ozzy's No Rest for the Wicked. Oops, that was in 1988.

Jimmy Iovine brought him to Axl, they said. Not bad for Jimmy to get a has-been (at least, from a commercial point of view) to be the next producer on the label's megastar. Axl must've been easy, given the RTB-handled Queen II is one of his all-time favorites. RTB walked in mere months after Brian May. Like Sean Beavan followed Robin Finck in. Another round of happy co-incidences, anyone?

I get home at about 2:00 in the morning and from 2:00 until 4:00 in the morning I sit at my laptop, cut up all my beats, make more beats, more sounds, and then bring them into the producer and say, 'Hey, check this out. Are you into this?' (Brain, 2001)

All those beats and sounds Brain worked on with his Giant Robot collaborator, Pete Scaturro. A whole batch of new songs came out, readied with Buckethead guitarring. Shackler, Sorry, Jackie Chan (née Checkmate)... The General, which comes with a slow, grinding riff and an orchestration with a Hollywood battle sequence prelude flair to it. Meaning it uses big ominous sounds next to small ominous sounds. Human hyperbole Sebastian Bach said The General was an Estranged sequel. Which would make it the fourth song in the fifth part of a trilogy.

That's not a very classic rock album, Axl. (Also, there was Soul Monster (neé Leave Me Alone), with the vocals for the bridge recorded on a Christmas Eve, and Axl having a particularly Grinch moment. I can just see the sound engineers wearing elf hats.)

To put a word on it, I'd surmise ChiDem2 as having a sprawling, stylized number like NR or TWAT (Atlas), along with a few stronger Bucket/Brain songs. Regardless of what the rest of the album would be like, I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss those three tracks as leftovers, rather than the ones left behind, waiting for the rapture to return.

One day, it may.