It was never going to be great. Just like Brian Wilson's "Smile", somewhere around the 5-10 year mark the potential for this album to actually deliver was done. When you spend that much time in the studio tinkering on something, one thing is for sure. It's going to be a studio album, it's going to be one person's vision or idea boiled down to a single purpose or idea; or it's going to be a muddled mess of disparate elements competing for primacy in an environment that is ultimately hostile to a truly creative process. The title track bangs away for just under 5 minutes and is a perfectly fine heavy "nu" metal track, but that’s all it is. And it is also the best thing on the album. Replace the vocalist with say Corey Taylor of Slipknot and you've got a, ummm... a Slipknot song.
If Axl had said, “screw this,” scrapped the album (again); wrote a bunch of songs; went into the studio with Izzy, Slash, and Duff; and banged an album out in a week or two -- quick, dirty and nasty -- we'd all be better off (we'd definitely be better off without "Better”).
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Joel Meyer,
Senior Producer, Soundcheck
Before joining Soundcheck in March 2007, Joel was a producer on Air America Radio’s The Al Franken Show. He has also worked as an associate editor at the television trade magazine Broadcasting & Cable and as an operations manager at WRHU-FM in Hempstead, N.Y.
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