If you are looking for a paid review of this album look no further than the latest issue of Rolling Stone. However, if you are looking for an unbiased review of this album, look no further.

We have been waiting for this record for 14 years. We have been teased like a virgin at prom night with various leaks and live footage of many of these songs. Finally, the day for Chinese Democracy is at hand. Was this worth the wait like the awkward prom night sex that ended in only crying and a sticky stomach? Yes, I think it was, but you have to check your previous held biases at the door. That means ignore the fact that Axl Rose is an asshole. Forget the fact this record took 14 years. Don't remind yourself that none of the original band members are on this record. If you can do those three things, you will enjoy this record.

The liner notes to this album are a page and half and it easy to see why this record cost like 10 million dollars to record. The personnel alone probably cost 9 million. Many of the tracks have at least five guitarists on them (Buckethead, Bumblefoot, Robin Finck, Richard Fortus, and Paul Tobias) The only recurring musicians are Axl Rose, Tommy Stinson, and Dizzy Reed. Stinson plays bass on all tracks but one, while Reed plays keyboards or piano on all except one and helped write a couple of them. Rose of course sings on all of them.

There are harps, sub basses, choirs of singers, mellotrons, syth orchestras, regular orchestras, french horns, regular horns and a host of other smaller instruments.

The first track Chinese Democracy is a pump up rock song driven by blistering guitars and screaming vocals. The vocal tracks are layered on top of one another, a technique that Axl seems happy with as it shows up again in Shackler's Revenge, parts of Better, parts of There Was a Time, and Scraped. My thoughts still remain the same on Chinese Democracy the song. Read them here.

The album continues the rocking theme with the Nine Inch Nails industrial song Shackler's Revenge. This song has a very low growling Axl vocal track layered underneath a high pitch screaming Axl track. The layered vocals add nothing to the song, only confuse me or long for him to choose a fucking vocal styling. The layered vocals also cut out the up and down in the vocals...no low notes and no high notes. It keeps things flat and with the guitars that bleep and tweak (typical Buckethead solo). Shackler's Revenge sounds like a computer gone haywire.

Better follows as the third track. I like this song. It has a great driving guitar riff that combine great with the drums and the bass. Then there is a Buckethead industrial metal on metal sounding guitar that slips in and out of the riffs. The chorus really hurts this great song because it doesn't flow with the rest of the song. It sounds like it was spliced in or like it was an older version that was kept in after Axl tweaked the verse parts.

I think this track (and album) would have benefited from Izzy Stradlin's vision. Izzy was always able to see the big picture with the song and was able to really mesh parts together well to make a cohesive song. I think Axl is really missing this on Chinese Democracy. You can hear various parts that are almost "square hole round peg" slammed into different parts of the song.

Axl's voice sounds great and can easily been seen on Street of Dreams and the ending scream in There Was A Time. Street of Dreams is another solid song with a crescendoing verse into chorus structure. But still there are parts that just don't mix well with one another. There are guitar solos that are just put in there as if Axl said "What would make this song better, 6 guitar solos." and then just put them in at regular intervals. The solos are good, but a song full of guitar solos is not a song.

If the World sounds like a middle eastern Shaft theme song. It might be a great song for a James Bond theme song. It has a flamenco inspired guitar opening done by Buckethead. Buckethead switches to electric and adds another industrial heavy guitar riff. There is also a string machine used on this track and I have no idea what the fuck that is and I can't really hear strings in it. I like the risk taken on this song. By risk I mean, just the combining middle eastern music with 70's grooves and industrial metal. But the second solo doesn't fit in the whole scheme of the song. The third acoustic guitar solo doesn't work for me either.

There Was A Time has it's moments, but the entire first half of the song is forgettable. None of the parts of this song fit together, but I love the ending guitar solo and the screaming Axl vocal at the end. That part rocks, but if I am driving in my Ford Taurus I am going to have to fast forward and then turn the track up around the 3:30 mark to make a statement. Hopefully my spinning hubcabs will mesmerize the people in the other car while I fast forward this track to that point.

Overall I like the album. I think it has it's moments. I love the guitar work on the album, even if they are not fit together into one cohesive unit.  But with session players like Robin Finck, Buckethead, Bumblefoot, and Richard Fortus, the guitars were never going to be a problem. I just wished each song had a flow. Things seemed ill fit like discolored Legos or Frankenstein's monster. Sometimes the song can be ruined by an out of place guitar solo, choir portion, or piano breakdown.

The album is definely overproduced. It is polished and the gritty raw sound of Appetite for Destruction is lost. It sounds like an even more polished version of Use Your Illusion I and II. But Axl has done nothing but produce this album for the last 14 years.

I think you should give this album a listen. Whether you want to buy it or not is up to you, but I think it is worth a listen as Axl intended it, not on their MySpace site and not ripped from your favorite download site. Go to Barnes and Noble and listen to it or grab it from your friend and give it a hardy listen.

The album doesn't live up to the hype, but it never could. The album isn't even the best rock record put out this year. But it is a good rock record. As I said in the beginning of this review, you have to put your bias aside or you will hate it.

There are still a lot of questions Axl has to answer, what is next? Will he be able to complete a full Chinese Democracy tour? Who will he tour with, player wise? How will he pull these songs off live with sometimes three guitars layered on top of one another? I don't know, but you have Chinese Democracy to listen to until he answers them.