Gone Forever

Century Media, June 2004

So the other day James and I were talking about Sevendust and their cool black singer, and it led my thoughts to God Forbid and their cool black singer, and their cool black drummer. Never really (previously) being a God Forbid fan, I bought this cd back in ‘04 and really enjoyed it. This cd is metal, not only for four years ago, but in todays modern metal  society its metal as balls. It’s catchy, it has cool singy  choruses, sweet solos, bombastic breakdowns, its got everything you need to have a great listening experience. I re-added it to my ipod and rocked out while ironing my clothers last night. Good times.

Sevendust was pretty cool back in the day as well.

and even

(which I think REALLY sucks by the way)

I am now perfectly free to create my final AOTY list without worrying that there is something I am knowingly missing out on. So, in just over a week’s time, my list shall begin - by hook or by crook. Be forewarned, this one’s gonna be a doozy.

the real thing is here in my grubby little virtual hands thanks to a little birdie that flew it upto my window, my official thoughts coming soon.
keep in mind, i didn’t really care for many of the demos that the one dude got arrested for leaking back in the summer and i still have problems believing this stupid cd can come anywhere close to living up to the insane-o brain-o  hype that 15 or whatever years brings along with it, but we shall see.

OK so here it goes.

I’m torn on how to feel about this cd. Obviously, it can’t and doesn’t hold a candle to the GNR we all knew and loved back in the day. As most people know, it’s basically just the Axl Rose Band at this point, and it sounds like a record made by a man who couldn’t really decide what he wanted his record to sound like so he just crammed as much into it as possible. This thing sounds huuge, and it’s kinda all over the place stylistically, and while Axl seems to try to revisit past glories, anyone that’s really expecting a bunch of songs like ‘Welcome To The Jungle’ or ‘November Rain’ are SOL.  He’s got sounds on here that range from being industrial to funk to stuff that seems to channel his inner Dream Theater and Queen..like i said, allll over the place.
Now, that’s not to say they are bad songs, because most of them aren’t at all. Most have a good amount of hookiness and headnodability, and there are a couple tunes I really dig (Prostitute, Street Of Dreams, and Better come to mind) but they ultimately just don’t feel all that memorable to me. Remember the late 90s and early 2000s? Nu-metal was at it’s peak and I was right up in there as a big fan of the genre as a whole. I literally bought like every freakin’ record that came out no matter the band and tended to find things I liked about it. Today, the majority of that stuff is basically just around on my iPod for nostalgia’s sake..it’s there for a novelty listen at best and then gets forgotten until the urge strikes me once more. That’s how Chinese Democracy already feels to me. This record sounds like it came out back in 2001 or so (and that’s probably when it SHOULD have been released); it’s ridiculously pristine production wise, it has all the sonic variety of a nu-metal cd (maybe without all the emotional pull out your hair in angst bridges all those songs had)..basically it sounds like Axl trying to fit into that scene while keeping his classic GNR sensabilities.  I enjoy it, but I feel like I’ve heard it before and I’m just revisiting it. Obviously, time will tell as to what the shelf life of this disc is and one can’t help but wonder how awesome it would be if the classic GNR reunited and made a new balls to the wall rock n roll record like they did back in the day, but for now this is what we’ve got and I’m trying to enjoy it, and doing so more and more with each listen.

3.2/5

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old news maybe, but whatever. it’ll still be badass.

Don’t ask why.. but i’ll pass it on to you! Enjoy!