New? You Call This New?

Pushing 50 with wrinkled varacose hands grasping at the straws of his youth, Axl Rose and his cohorts (a term used with a grimace, since the driving force is singular) released Chinese Democracy yesterday. This album has been the butt of jokes, the basis for lawsuits, and mastabatory fare for legions of heavy metal hangers-on for the last 15 years. If you were lucky, yesterday you signed up for free Dr. Pepper. If you were unlucky, you bought Chinese Democracy.

This album marks the end of an era for rock music. In all of its self-aggrandizing stupor and bloated production, Guns 'N Roses made a fatal mistake. They neglected to take into account the market, or lack there of, for this kind of record. Music is a reflection of the times, and the times in which we currently live are lean. 14 studios, 15 years, and x-millions of dollars are not reflective of the modern human situation. Rose, instead of being rock's savior, sage, or even backward looking elder, is instead its dinosaur -- starving, having not been killed by catastrophe, yet doomed to die in the fallout, bloated from from cannibalization and impaction.

Does the music sound good? Sure, with a production budget like they had and no restrictions or limitations and nothing but time to burn, any band in your neighborhood garage can make a record that sounds as sonically interesting as Chinese Democracy. As Axl proves, the money can make you sound polished, but it can't save the songs which seem unfit and juvenile for a man his age.

A real Zzzzz fest.