I reported the leaks on Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Chinese Democracy’ album recently, and now it’s finally getting a timely full release. Yesterday’s official statement from Best Buy and Geffen Records gave us a street date of November 23rd for CD, vinyl LP (with a free digital download) and digital album versions, and pre-orders have already begun today.

The title single from the album was yesterday sent to radio stations, and they immediately started airing it and eagerly listening to fan’s thoughts. Many US station reps have shared their thoughts over at Billboard.com.

Is it any good? Well, Steve Kandell at Spin.com says, “Once the overture of muffled voices, ominous drums, and plinky Edge-ish guitar gives way to a thick, muscular four-chord riff and that Axl banshee wail, only the most stubbornly jaded will manage to suppress the goosebump reflex”

Want to make your own mind up? You can listen here – add your views in the comment section.

It has been an incredibly long wait for the new GNR material; their first album since 1991’s seminal ‘Use your Illusion I’ & ‘Use your Illusion II’ releases. It’s been such a debacle that soda company Dr Pepper once offered to “provide a free can of the soda to everyone in the U.S. if the album drops this year” (today they kept their promise and made plans for the free deal).

Was it worth the wait? Did the band gain anything by waiting this long? Does anyone still care about the album? Let me know your thoughts…

Lee Jarvis.

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The LA Times has reported that an arrest was made by the FBI following a leak of unreleased material from old school rockers Guns n Roses. Kevin Cogill, a Culver City resident known as Skewl online, was arrested on suspicion of violating federal copyright law by posting the nine songs on his blog Antiquiet.

I’m not sure what possesses these people to do it, whether they think they are offering a service to the underground internet-savvy youth who torrent millions of songs every year. Well, unfortunately for them, there’s an internet-savvy federal department after them, and rightly so I say – what the culprits are doing is morally wrong.

With all the new laws coming into effect to give the FBI extra clout, I expect a few more of these stories. Although, I think they were devised with the big-wigs running huge file-sharing sites in mind, as opposed to some dude in suburbia blogging in his basement.

Now, 24 hours and many blog comments later, some people are saying how this smells kinda like a publicity stunt, some say the whole thing was set up to warn people off sharing / downloading illegally hosted music (My GNR forum has plenty of controversial comments to wade through). The fact that Cogill and friends were back on the blog talking about the case the day after the FBI took them in for questioning seems suspect.

I’m sure there’s a whole heap of rights and wrongs and in betweens, so feel free to pick a side and let the slanging begin in the comment section here…(!)

Lee.

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