Before we get to "Chinese Democracy" and all that, let us reflect on where this whole mess came from. In 1987, five gritty punks busted out of Hollywood with a sneering scream and an aggressive blues guitar attack, providing just the kick in the ass that prefab '80s pop-metal needed to become officially irrelevant. By September 1991, they were the No. 1 rock act in the world, with "Use Your Illusion" at the top of the charts and a glammy live show that was half soap opera, half amazing. The next week, three different punks busted out of Seattle with a tortured scream and an aggressive guitar attack, and soon thereafter the age of such self-indulgent super arena rock was over. Guns N' Roses, with possibly the swiftest explosion and implosion since the Sex Pistols, were gone by 1994.

But the dream lived on, and that very year the shunted, controlling mastermind Axl Rose vowed that he would bring the excessiveness back into rock 'n' roll. With a few brief resurfacings, he divided the next 14 years between recording "Chinese Democracy" and getting into primadonna arguments with his management about the minutiae of recording "Chinese Democracy."

So with all this production and surgical perfection, how is the product? Axl builds the first song up with weird noises and swishy sounds for a full minute, but just 20 seconds into the meat of it it becomes obvious that he's missed the mark completely. Every song is more or less awful, with other effective words used to describe the record including abrasive, repetitive, unpleasant, hopeless, pointless and self-absorbed. Yet I can picture exactly how Axl got here, trying endlessly to outdo himself and everyone else, occasionally breaking something in frustration when another band released a song that made one of his obsolete; his is really the story of a tragic artist, except that he's such a pain in the ass that nobody has any sympathy for him.

So what is the future of Guns N' Roses, the Axl-certified knock off brand? They can't possibly tour on the strength of this album, it really is lousy; it's like Linkin' Park on speed, and Axl's voice, once a band highlight, is abysmal. It's also hopelessly out-of-date in its influences (Industrial metal? Please.) and so vastly different from their original sound that not even a fan can appreciate it. So does Axl disappear, fade gradually into a novelty casino act, or combust in some sort of final superdiva event? Or does the real GNR, the one spread out as five middle-aged ex-punk junkies around the world, put it together for one more round of real, no-punches-pulled rock? The odds of a reunion seem far longer than those of Axl eventually ending up on reality TV, but a man can always dream. Axl will never be as talented or important as he was in 1991, but he has had chances to bring that fire back into rock; sadly, "Chinese Democracy" botches a lot of them.