If Axl Rose spent fifteen years perfecting Chinese Democracy, I most certainly am allowed two months to get my head around it. I believe it’s called respect in some circles.

I don’t know about everybody else but for the last 15 years, I’ve been busy living my life and not sitting around waiting for Axl Rose to deem his masterpiece worthy of public consumption. On an unprecedented global scale, most reviewers of Chinese Democracy have found the story of the album a more interesting tale than the album itself - which is something akin to being asked what you did yesterday afternoon and responding with your life story. And now the Holy Grail is upon us, those same people have not really formulated much of an opinion on the album at all, which is actually a much bigger crime than the one Axl perpetrated in the name of art.

Chinese Democracy is full of holes, but then, so is the sky and that still seems to work just fine. The point everybody seems to be missing is that Chinese Democracy is a logical extension of all that came before. Let’s say that Live Like a Suicide was a band testing the water. Seeing that the water was good, Guns n Roses went on to record a great rock n roll album in the shape of Appetite for Destruction that was simply right place, right time. While that may be something of an understatement, I’m pretty sure of myself when I say that the rest of the band would have been happy to pump another out a year later straight off the cuff and be a “real rock n roll band”.

Axl however, was never going to put an album out that, no matter how good the songs were, would put the band in the same league as the other guys that left Los Angeles with them. (Calling Bang Tango. Calling Faster Pussycat…). With Use Your illusion I & II, there was so much material - some instant, some that took years to realise its worth - that nobody could possibly compare them to Appetite. They did try though and all of them failed miserably.

Such is Chinese Democracy. With no members of the original band left (not that there were all the original members on any other releases), comparison is futile. Axl wins again. He may not be in the ball park he originally intended (that of creating another Day at the Races), but putting himself in a game with only him playing, how could he fail. As Jim once said “How can you be late for your own show?” Actually that’s probably a question that Axl could answer better than anybody.

As the single Chinese Democracy shuddered its way into the world as a precursor to the album proper, it showed one thing. Slash or no Slash, the album was still going to be the equivalent of walking into a bar with nothing on but your pants. That solitary guitar at full throttle, not quite keeping a beat or pace with anything else, is most unnerving to say the least. It’s the aural equivalent of The Fellowship of the Ring simply because it’s a riff full of hope and suggested adventure, which is all any of us should ever have wanted from it. The fact that a couple of months on, none of us have a clue what the song is really about only serves to make it more important.

Once its big sister hit the racks, it became a free for all. The Big Web became full of people saying in equal amounts that it was “utter shit” or the “greatest thing ever” - both entirely based on a gut reaction, years of living with bootlegs or some basic need to say anything at all. In other words, pointless blabbing.

Personally, I find Shackler’s Revenge really weak, (though time may tell a different story), but Better is outrageously beautiful. Creeping at first, it daringly opens its coat to reveal a Matrix-like arsenal of hooks, melody and lyrics (complete with killer harmonies) fit for a king, allowing the album to settle into a groove that feels like home.

If Street of Dreams sprawls across the decks with ‘that’ piano that we’ve missed so much and makes us feel like we’re on home turf again, If the World rubbishes that idea with its dead beats and dumbed down slap bass. Coming on like the closing soundtrack tune from a movie you loved but likewise didn’t understand, it burrows itself under the skin and feels odd. The track doesn’t really go anywhere or do anything but repeatedly present itself and its looped five second rhythm to your psyche, so why it should linger long and hard is beyond me. This is disturbing but by now, the smart listener should have decided to quit trying to second guess where it’s going and settle in for the journey. The dumb listener on the other hand is busy typing comments into Big Web forums. I’m going to skip over There Was A Time. It’s one of those holes in the sky for me.

Then we come to one of the albums centrepieces. Catcher in the Rye is one of the most talked about songs on board but at six minutes forty, it falls short of what it’s trying so hard to be, which is November Rain bottled together with Queen’s Spread Your Wings. Scraped follows and does exactly what it says it will - but here comes the brute: Riad n’ the Bedoins says more than anything what Chinese Democracy is about. You can’t do anything to this song. You can’t be angry, dance to it or drive to it - not without ripping out your gearbox anyway. I’ve tried. It hosts multiple threads of its own life and is going to stand out for a long time to come - and shit, that solo that kicks in towards the end has got it all!

As we ease our way towards the final act - almost as if somebody knew they were doing when they put the album together - the whole project falls into place track after track in a spectacular display of rock masterclass. Sorry begins the journey by posing as an understated ballad of sorts that bleeds and bleeds until there’s nothing left to give. Indeed, Sorry is so big, I still can’t fit it all in my head and to follow it with I.R.S. which parades its badass attitude with parade is genius. Then cometh Madagascar - the behemoth of the moment. A stunning foray into the outer reaches of the soul, this sums up Chinese Democracy for me. I won’t even attempt to justify it with words. This does for me what Dreamer (Tommy Bolin) does. It simply punches hard where you’re wounded. This Is Love then comes round the back for a fatal suckerpunch to the head. Frankly, it’s a mean way to finish off an album - and probably goes some way to explaining why Prostitute brings up the back end. This ‘gang’ of songs combined hit hard, hit fast and hit bigger than anything else I’ve heard in a long time.

So, I find myself not able to wrap up Chinese Democracy eloquently at all. It’s an album that defies any categorisation. It’s too big. It’s too powerful. It does strange things. Full as it is of shock and awe, it all seems very normal and that’s when things are most dangerous. It’s never the kid on the corner full of booze who’s the real danger. It’s the guy with the scope behind the curtain you need to watch out for.

Sion Smith