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Chinese Democracy is clearly not the greatest rock album ever made, but nor is it an absolute and utter failure. The irony is, that for all the lavishing of money and time and technology, it's saved by something as old fashioned as a good tune.
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It is odd that something so standard provides the denouement to this album, trying to span over a decade of fan loyalty. Will they buy it? Undoubtedly. Will they like it? Who knows.
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It is ridiculous. It is overblown, it's pompous, it's aggressive and it's absurdly ambitious. But, here's the rub: it's actually pretty damn good. It rocks, often pretty hard.
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Yet even if it defies expectations, Chinese Democracy is not the masterpiece that it so desperately wants to be.
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While the album can aptly be termed “good,” it isn’t the epic that many might expect, especially to those whose interests have long since shifted away from GN’R’s aesthetic and the younger generation unable to emotionally connect with the sounds.
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MojoChinese Democracy reveals itself to be an ambitious, brave and expansive offering. [Feb 2009, p.108]
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Even if Chinese Democracy had dropped a decade previous, it would still sound dated.
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While the band's label, fans and a handful of rock journalists would like to hail this album as the Second Coming of Rock, the reality is that Chinese Democracy is neither a musical resurrection nor the audio equivalent of Ishtar.
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Too bad the epitaph’s already scrawled in Chinese Democracy’s anachronistic margins: a bottomless pit dug by disposable income, a persecution complex and egomania.
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Soundwise, Chinese Democracy is all over the place.
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Meandering atmospheric intros and outros, with lyrics that often just repeat the same verse ad nauseum, overshadow what could be, at times, shorter, snappier songs.
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For all the wank and bluster throughout the album’s 14 tracks, the bottom line is that the shit simply doesn’t rock.
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The album fifteen years in the making that sounds like a slick but robotic imitation of what it might have been long ago.
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Q MagazineBy throwing everything at the wall and nailing up the stuff that didn't stick, he's done himself--and more importantly what he clearly views as his masterpiece--a grand disservice. [Jan 2009, p.110]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 348 out of 427
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Mixed: 27 out of 427
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Negative: 52 out of 427
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Jul 29, 2012
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Feb 11, 2013
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Mar 27, 2011