Is Chinese Democracy for real? The New Leak!

Guns 'N Roses to release a new Album in 2008?

For those of you who were monitoring the internet this week: Nine near-finished GnR demos leaked - taking the internet by storm. The songs (identified as actual tracks from the ever-forthcoming Guns 'N Roses' album Chinese Democracy) are 14 years in the making. The long wait has done very little to extinguish the GnR homefires. The internet traffic and music chit-chat focused on these new pirated songs has been astounding. Is the band back?


Past Leaks and Old Promises: In 2006, a pair of raw demos leaked but were quickly covered up. In 2007, a few more (perhaps closer to completion) "somehow" leaked it out to the online public. People were mostly unimpressed, but many more remained loyal despite the prolonged wait. They saw the demos as cause for celebration. ) The online media mill churned. The noise about these songs has been loud - almost deafening at times.... But we keep asking, where is the music?

The "Epic Adventure" ~ Chinese Democracy: Any news about this project always has the chance to be dismissed as just another leafed page in the the unfinished novel (an Axl Rose myth that has already cost his label a reported $13 Million.) Up until now, this whole thing had the feel of a 21st Century version of Brian Wilson's Pet Sounds. (But then again, even Pet Sounds was released after the editing was all done!) In April, the ever-diligent NME (ha, ha) and TheRockRadio.com had reported the project was in final edit.)

The very prospect of this material ever seeing the light of day has seemed such an obvious farce that Dr. Pepper has offered a free can of their soda to every American when Axl ever releases the material. Axl thanked the soda maker in a press release. So while we're not sipping on Pepper yet, but this is the closest we have come to enjoying the spoils of Axl Rose's labor.

What happened this week: The Leak of the new material; whether cleverly orchestrated and manipulated somehow by Axl (there is no official comment yet commenting on the leak) - or an example of outright theft from the mixing room - resulted in NINE SONGS for us to evaluate. I knew I wanted to hear the songs. Like a bloodhound, I was in hot pursuit. But demand was so high on hosting web site Antiquiet that I was unable to get the songs straight from their source. When I returned an hour or two later, the songs had been pulled down after the site owners, who had reportedly been contacted on the band's behalf by some kindly legal folks. You can read more on the legal action on Metal Sucks.

Mythic Project + Leaked Demos = High Demand + Legal Problems

As to authenticity of the recordings: I have the songs and based on what I have heard there is little question that the man a handful of these tracks is classic Axl Rose. The others represent a drastic change in the mood and form of the band - maybe capturing the last 12 years of the artist's life as he has come full circle.

The desire to hear these tracks set off an Indiana Jones-like journey through the back alleyways of the internet. The large sites and best blogs had nothing. (This is, after all, a legal hot potato.) I needed to hear the tracks for myself so I ended up walking down some dark corridors of the web: (you know these spaces) torrent sites, chat rooms and mostly un-noteworthy blogs. And, finally I found them. The 9 new songs - And, you know what? A couple of them (not all, though) were truly great.


My favorites of the leaked songs were "Chinese Democracy" (very loud, wailing guitar and storm cloud crackle) and the untitled "New Song #1 (a kick ass GnR classic with Mr. Rose screaming over some fantastic guitars and kickin' drums.) Check out another review, here. And this one, here.

If the finished product (Chinese Democracy has been rumored to be a massive project consisting of as many as 20 or more songs!) is anything like the two tracks I mentioned and doesn't get bogged down in engineered sound effects and insincere ballads with poor lyric selection (there are examples of this kind of horseshit in the demos), Guns 'N Roses will have a huge return to fame and a massive financial year. Stay tuned.

Guns 'N Roses Web

Comments

Dan said…
2012.

2012.

~Dan
http://jazzsick.wordpress.com/
Anonymous said…
It was one of my favorite band from the 80-and 90,and still a great band.
warmly greet

bye
Sean said…
Man, that's even worse then The Stone Roses, Second Coming, the making of which was considered a total debacle. It seemed to take forever to come out... and that was less then four years.
Anonymous said…
i really like the song "better" was there a newer version of that just leaked???
Anonymous said…
Unless Slash, Izzy, and Duff are involved it's not Guns N' Roses.
Anonymous said…
And Steven Adler...

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