Look elsewhere for the second coming. I don't know where, but certainly not here. I mentioned the Chinese Democracy ad campaigns in my review of the "Chinese Democracy" single and unsurprisingly, for all the bombast, anticipation and outright ridicule the album has stumbled across, it turns out that the finished product wasn't really worth waiting 17 years for. That's not to say it's a disaster - the new Guns N' Roses haven't disgraced themselves here, and in some respects it's actually a triumph (not least because it's actually out!). But anyone expecting either a full-blown return to form or a hard rock opus for the 21st century will be disappointed. Neither of those targets are fulfilled, but in listening to Chinese Democracy it often seems that Axl Rose never aimed to achieve them. Derivative in parts it may be, but this album is still fiercely individualistic, dominated almost always by Axl himself, who frequently sounds like he's singing with his back against the wall. In parts, these songs sound like a document to the chaotic and epic story that the creation of this album has been.Despite having heard the opening and title track several times before, hearing it again knowing that the rest of this infamous album was waiting in the wings behind it was a different experience. During that long long buildup you wonder what the rest of the album is going to sound like - the curious thing is that whilst "Chinese Democracy" eventually explodes into genuine hard rock, it's almost in a minority in that sense. Can an album sound both dumbed down and overblown at the same time? That's the question Axl has me asking myself. Ridiculously long (at more than seventy minutes), treated to an immensely dense production and loaded down with several grossly overlong songs, Chinese Democracy simultaneously fails to open up into serious rockage as often as you'd hope or expect. There's nothing on here that's really like "Welcome to the Jungle" or even "You Could Be Mine". The focus has changed - the number of ballads here, for example, may put this firmly in the Use Your Illusion stable rather than the Appetite for Destruction one, but it goes deeper than that. This is something thoroughly new, as you'd hope, but to these ears, it's less genuinely Guns N' Roses than before.So what marks out the new order? Pomposity is the first thing that springs to mind, not just because of the album's production or length. "Sorry" is immensely slow and boring, ruined by Axl's hilariously delivered vocals in parts. It's nowhere near interesting enough to justify the time it uses up, in much the same way that the ludicrous outro to "There Was A Time" outstays its welcome by a margin of about two and half minutes or guitar solo-age. On the other hand though, the grand scope does work sometimes - "Street of Dreams" could easily have come off as hammy with its tender piano and vocal acrobatics, but actually, it stays the right side of the line and really works, becoming a genuine highlight. Similarly, soft the intro and outro to "Better" also work, gelling effectively with the more brash nature of the rest of the song - it's an example of Axl's talent to combine disparate elements into something entertaining.The trouble is that much of the album's best content is loaded into the first half. It's that overlong thing "There Was A Time" which signals worse things to come, quickly followed by the nothingy "Catcher in the Rye" and the oddly discordant "Scraped". "Riad N' The Bedouins" is boisterous enough to get things back on track a bit, despite starting with yet another slow, time-wasting synth intro. The song is one of the few times the album really rocks, rather than just being rock. Whilst they had their bloated moments, the Use Your Illusion records also had some pulse-pounding songs on them, which despite trying ever so hard, Chinese Democracy usually fails to emulate. There's something lacking in the drums, something almost imperceptibly less meaty and satisfying in the riffs.Chinese Democracy was never going to be a masterpiece. The odds were always stacked against it, with all the chaotic tours, egotism, pessimism and the immense weight of expectation. Of course this will all be lapped up by the die hard fans and others, and there's something nice about a new album by a great hard rock name - if not a great hard rock album - being such a major talking point in 2008. Nevertheless, it's hard not to be disappointed, and to feel that maybe if things had been a little different, Chinese Democracy could have been great. 47%Guns N' Roses on MySpace