Guns n' Roses- Chinese Democracy

The self proclaimed most anticipated record EVER has finally turned up, after 14 years of adding a bleep here, an orchestra there and turning up the guitars a little bit in the cans please, Axel has sent his new record out into the world.
The problem is that a lot of people with access to the interspaz and the knowledge of nefarious sites have heard the demos and early mixes of these songs over the last few years so there's zero surprises here. Apart from the odd name change and Axel's Sade phase from 1998 actually making it onto the album nothing jumps out as being shocking.
Well apart from the record not being a total car crash and actually being quite good. Anyone expecting another Appetite for Destruction will be let down, taking the BIG sound and Queen fascination that the Use Your Illusion records showed and really going for it.
There are waves of guitars (each song averages 5 guitarists), thousands of multi tracked Axels and keyboards filling any gaps that the other instruments have missed and that's just the first 30 seconds of the opening track. If you're going to employ 4 or 5 producers over the years then I guess you want something to show for it but Chinese Democracy is so polished that a lot of the immediacy and smacking you around the back of the head aggresion that made the original band so popular is gone now.
That's not to say that the songs are lacking, they've just been buffed to within an inch of their lives and there's a couple too many piano driven big ballads but songs like the title track, Better, There Was a Time and Prostitute stand out for having great tunes and they'll translate on record or live.
Whether anyone will actually care and buy the record in big enough numbers to make this profitable's highly debatable but at least it's finally done and the pigs can get ready to fly.