I don't think the cover is real, largely because of what we've gotten in the past:

Appetite: Named for a crazy painting by a respected artist.

UYI: The cover and booklets include quality art pieces.

ChiDem red hand and grenade (i.e. the versions Axl apparently liked best): Basically they are galleries of high-end art.

This proposed cover looks like it would be just fine for a concert poster but does not match the standards set by the albums we've gotten so far.

They need to include the weird interludes.

The Beatles did it.

NIN does it.

Hell, Lauren Hill and Janet Jackson did it and pop music fans in the 1990s called them geniuses.

If that instrumental is intended as an intro, include it.

Get these abstract, mood-setting instrumentals out there to bookend and support the more traditional songs. They are equally amazing.

For real! He is amazing!

What is the mailing list? How can we join?

Brain again (from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7mH8ulKAbE ). Others have mentioned this but here is the full quote:

“But we called it ‘The General’ because we were we were eating general’s chicken but when I turned it in to Axl he thought it was called ‘The General’ because i was kind of making fun of Tommy as Tommy was, the band, you know, kind of like the MD. He was like the music, you know, the band’s musical director when we'd have rehearsals and he thought, like, you know, I was like poking fun at Tommy as being, like, you know, like a general, like, you know, like, ‘Okay, we're rehearsing at this time,’ and, you know, and that kind of shit, and I was like, ‘No, dude, it was because we ate general's chicken.’

“You know, we were writing all these crazy songs to try to turn in to, you know, and and these were coming from, like, you know, like, Extrakd is an old school dj and so this the shit we were putting together was crazy. You know, we were just we were just kind of going, like, ‘Okay,’ you know, ‘like, what samples should we find for Axl?’ Like, ‘Well he's kind of like Julius Caesar,’ so we were like sampling Julius Caesar, like, looking for albums, you know, and old school crazy shit and I think we sampled, like, ‘Ben Hur’ and chopped it up and cut it up and that became a jam called ‘Seven.’ I think we called it ‘Seven.’

“And then, you know, and I remember bringing ‘em, to, you know, the studio to have I think Roy Thomas Baker was producing at that point and, um, you know and he was we'd be playing the stuff and he'd be in you know. Like, one of the songs that actually is called the album that we're making now is called Mars Mechanics and, um, one of the songs we have on the album we put that one on the album and it was one of the ones that I played for Roy and you know he, he was like, ‘What is this? Reggae?’ You know? And I was just like, no, because it was like a Neil Young old-school jam that you know Mirv was just going off on but the whole thing was just like, you know, I was turning in all these, like, weirdo songs that were coming, you know, like, way far to the left or whatever and, you know, it was just kind of a crazy story of how that's one of them was ‘The General’ and I think Axl actually sang on ‘The General.’”

This seems to be the Mars Mechanics song he originally recorded with/for GNR: