Guns N' Roses

The name Guns N’ Roses is a hex, a curse; synonymous with dysfunction, collapse, and eternal damnation—the Voldemort of the rock world. The group has never made an album better than their 1987 debut “Appetite for Destruction”—one of the best hard rock records ever—and has never written a song better than “Welcome to the Jungle,” that album’s unforgettable first track.

Two decades and four albums later, the band has hit its nadir. “Chinese Democracy,” their first album of original songs in 17 years, is thoroughly forgettable, neither worth the wait nor the $13 million-plus Axl Rose and company spent on its production. The whole thing is overproduced, every song a too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen kind of affair. Much has been made about the decline of rock at the hands of Pro Tools, but a monkey could have mixed this album better with GarageBand.

Throughout “Chinese Democracy,” Guns N’ Roses imitate every conceivable style of rock, sounding more like a bad tribute band than the rock messiahs they were once heralded as. Rose whines all over “Riad n’ the Bedouins,” a prog screed that Yes forgot to record; “Better,” the album’s second single, sounds like a Styx track with extra bleating; “Catcher in the Rye” is a bad cover of a lost Dispatch tune; and Slayer would have at least had fun with “Shackler’s Revenge,” a ridiculous approximation of thrash metal.

Rose and Caram Costanzo produced the album, apparently doing little more than turning up the volume on every track. “Chinese Democracy” is so loud it makes Slipknot sound sedate. Even for the masochistic soul who would endure volume levels high enough to discern any musical detail, the payoff is only in the pain. If democracy does come to China, I hope the revolution isn’t so gruesome a spectacle.

Played with the volume down, though, this album would make great elevator music. The undifferentiated wash of recycled rock tropes is the perfect soundtrack to awkward encounters in enclosed spaces. The music sounds like it should back The Weather Channel’s 4:08 weather update from Hell.

The song-writing has none of the same vigor that made the band’s pre-millennial work so bracing. The ballad-esque “Street of Dreams” begins like the lush “November Rain” from “Use Your Illusion I”—a few lines of piano and quiet guitar—but winds up mired in a boring melody and terrible lyrics: “What I thought was beautiful / Don’t live inside of you / Anymore.” “Madagascar” sees Rose sampling Martin Luther King, Jr. while singing about his mid-life crisis. Isn’t hard rock supposed to be more exciting than this? Rose wails a response on “Catcher in the Rye:” “If I thought that I was crazy / Well I guess I’d have more fun.” Ditto, Axl.

2008 has seen a slew of new releases from seemingly defunct bands, the best of which is Metallica’s “Death Magnetic,” released this past September. “Chinese Democracy” is the bastard brother of Portishead’s “Third,” another album that fans waited over a decade for. “Third,” released in April, seduces the listener with labyrinthine tracks, sounding like pared-down, refined versions of the trip-hop trio’s old songs. (Metallica also scaled down their sound for “Death Magnetic.”)

Guns N’ Roses has taken the opposite tack as Portishead and Metallica, slapping a sanctimonious album cover on 14 floppy messes and billing the resulting album as a progressive heir to their former greatness. But greatness is no more present on this album than democracy is in China—both are myths. Maybe “Chinese Democracy” should have stayed that way.

—Reviewer Kyle L. K. McAuley can be reached at kmcauley@fas.harvard.edu.