Two Times Too Little, Too Late

SteveK shares his impressions of the new Mudvayne and Guns N Roses

Mudvayne: The New Game

The year is drawing inevitably to a close. Soon it will be time for the CONFRONT staff to begin compiling their list of the best of 2008. I’m fairly sure no one will have either of the CDs I’ve listened to this week on their lists.

Mudvayne has been making music for twelve years, and this post-Grunge Hard Rock/Heavy Metal quartet’s sound is very distinctive of the era from which they emerged: their riffs are treble-charged and have basic verse-chorus-verse structure, stripped-down production and grating guitars. Their sound is somewhere between early Metallica and mid-career Pantera, and while other veteran performers have continued to evolve and develop their sound, Mudvayne has stayed in the same rut since sometime in the mid 1990s. What’s really tragic is that ‘The New Game’ would have been a really fantastic album, if it had been released back then.

This album sounds like a relic from a decade ago, because it fairly well is. The lyrical content is typical love-done-wrong, life-done-wrong, nihilistic, narcissistic rage, with angry screaming choruses and two-tone harmonized verses. ‘The New Game’ is very much the same game that Mudvayne have been playing since the Clinton Administration. The songs are essentially interchangeable and indistinguishable.

There is no denying that Mudvayne are talented musicians, and that Chad Gray is a capable singer. Which only makes it all the more mind-boggling that they squander their talent with such pedestrian and outmoded music. It would be one thing if they were actually bringing something new to their chosen musical genre, but they aren’t. This is all just more of the same.

Mudvayne: The New Game
Sony
Steve’s Rating: 6/10

Guns N Roses: Chinese Democracy

A lot of my fellow critics are already lining up to bash the hell out of this one. I suspect that some of them probably wrote their reviews before even giving the album a listen. Some will go into their listening of the album with their mind made up against it. Given that tracks from ‘Chinese Democracy’ were leaked online (what new albums aren’t “leaked” online these days?) and advance reviews weren’t favourable, it would be hard for anyone but the most ardent of fans to keep an open mind before hitting “Play”.

Admittedly I started listening to ‘Chinese Democracy’ with much the same mindset: I expected it to be bad. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

Of course, Axl Rose is the only original member of Guns N Roses left in the band; Izzy Stradlin is gone, as is Slash, Duff McKagan and Steven Adler. In fact, since the late 1990s, the Guns N Roses lineup has changed frequently and constantly since their founding, in March of 1985. Axl, Izzy and Slash were the core of the band. The Guns N Roses sound that they developed was diminished and diminished again by their departures.

In one iteration or another, ‘Chinese Democracy’ has been in production since 1995, and according to some reports it has cost an average of 1 million dollars per year, even as the band continued to tour. 13 years later, Axl Rose finally committed to the 14 tracks that now make up the new album.

Among the songs is the single “If The World”, most recently heard playing over the end credits of the interminably long Ridley Scott film, ‘Body of Lies’. If you’ve heard it, you know that Axl’s once-rich falsetto is now shrill and wavering. The ravages of time on Axl Rose are evident on other songs on the album, such as the title track, “Chinese Democracy”. The song mixes Chinese current-event political hot potatoes into the lyrics-not as a protest song but to craft ill-advised metaphors, such as using the Falun Gong to rhyme with “Can’t hold on” in the hook. Add to the frustration that the song opens with a 1:35 musical intro meant to build tension (it crescendos with a tired-sounding wail from Axl) that is absolutely pointless.

There was a time a Guns N Roses power ballad was downright epic; “November Rain” comes to mind. Now, the clumsy attempt at ballads that made it onto ‘Chinese Democracy’, namely “Street of Dreams” and “Catcher in the Rye”, sound like what they are: inferior attempts to recapture old glory.

There was a time when Guns N Roses courted controversy with every release; every single, every video was greeted with cries of “vulgarity”, or “racism” or “misogyny” or a dozen other passionate accusations. Nothing on ‘Chinese Democracy’ is going to inspire that sort of outrage. This album isn’t just tame by the previous standards (or lack thereof) of Guns N Roses; it is lame.

There was a time when critics of Axl Rose could expect diatribes both public and private from the singer. Most infamously, the song “Get In The Ring”, from ‘Use Your Illusion II’ in which Axl spent nearly six minutes spouting venom and veiled threats at every big name critic and journalist to have something bad to say about him. I can’t imagine Axl Rose being able to repeat such a rant convincingly, or with conviction.

I don’t hate ‘Chinese Democracy’. Axl Rose delivers a sincere effort here, but the effort is for naught. This album is lost in the very long shadows of every Guns N Roses album to come before-including ‘The Spaghetti Incident’. Most of all, I just feel disappointed that Axl felt it necessary to attempt to stage a comeback, and saddened that he failed to deliver.

Guns N Roses: Chinese Democracy
Geffen
Steve’s Rating: 5/10