New Music From Guns N' Roses

Is Axl Rose really ready to release that more-than-a-decade-in-the-making album?

By Marc Malkin Apr 04, 2008 12:10 AMTags
Axl RoseAP Photo/Jennifer Graylock

Guns N' Roses fans, the more-than-a-decade-in the-making album Chinese Democracy really does seem to be getting very close to a release date.

No, really. This is what I'm hearing:

Axl Rose & Co. have recently been letting people, music industry honchos, tastemakers and so forth, listen to six new tracks, according to a music executive who has heard the songs.

The exec raved about the music. “It’s really good,” he said. “Axl’s voice sounds exactly the same, but the songs sound contemporary. You expect it to be a trainwreck, but it’s not.”

Reps didn’t talk about exact release dates, according to my source, but they implied it could still happen by the end of the year. (Yes, I know we've heard this before.)

Just last week, Rose announced on the official Guns N’ Roses website that the band hired a new management team headed by heavyweights Irving Azoff and Andy Gould.

The band’s last original recordings, Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II, were released in 1991. Since their debut in 1985, they have sold an estimated 90 million albums worldwide.