OK, so you might need to squint and look really carefully but the cover & tracklist for Guns N’ Roses, Best Buy exclusive “Chinese Democracy” is up at Best Buy.com.

11 of the 14 songs have either leaked or been played live before, leaving only 3 un-surfaced songs. According to Billboard…

“In typical dramatic fashion, the first noise one hears on the album is a blood-curdling Axl Rose scream, according to multiple sources who’ve heard it.”

There isn’t a full list of all the musicians who have played on the album yet. If there is a list included in the album’s liner notes it will no doubt be extensive. I wonder if the album will still have Buckethead’s custom Gibson guitar featured on it. I’m not buying this piece of trash album so someone will have to let me know.

“Chinese Democracy” Full Tracklist

01 “Chinese Democracy”
02 “Scraped”
03 “Shackler’s Revenge”
04 “Street Of Dreams”
05 “If The World”
06 “Better”
07 “This I Love”
08 “There Was A Time”
09 “Riad N’ The Bedovins”
10 “Sorry”
11 “I.R.S.”
12 “Catcher”
13 “Madagascar”
14 “Prostitute”

So you’ve probably heard the rumors/news swarming the net about Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy. Supposedly, the long-awaited album will be released exclusively through Best Buy on November 25th. And supposedly their song “IF The World” will be featured in the end credits of Body of Lies, the new Ridley Scott movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, which comes out next month. Yup, that’s about it.

You might be thinking to yourself, “Really? That’s all you’re gonna give me? I just want to know the truth!” And I would have to reply that I agree. Perhaps all of these “rumors” being spread is just part of a huge marketing plan for an album that may not even be released in our lifetime and (I hate to say it) will probably not live up to all of the hype. (And therefore makes me feel as though simply by posting this blog, I might be just one of the wheels turning in the machine of Axl’s master plot to rule the world). But seriously, with hair like that, it’s not like you have to try hard to get people begging at your feet, right?

So let’s recap here. You begin reading the article to find out news about the Chinese Democracy’s release. And you end the article feeling a strange onset of widespread paranoia that has in turn led you to a wild frenzied search of youtube videos and 911 conspiracy theories. My job here is done.

Last month, there was a huge news story about a blogger being arrested for leaking songs from Guns N’ Roses forthcoming “Chinese Democracy” album. This story was ridiculous in many ways, namely the fact that the FBI was involved in the arrest of the blogger and that the blogger also faces the possibility of many years in jail. This was looked at as extremely heavy-handed and very anti-fan, on the part of Guns N’ Roses. Apparently though, the Blogger’s arrest has now resulted in even more downloading of the leaked “Chinese Democracy” songs than ever before.

Website TechDirt.com has an interesting piece on this…

“Bob Lefsetz does a quick email back-and-forth with Eric Garland of BigChampagne, the company that tracks file sharing activity. Garland points out that prior to the arrest, there was almost no file sharing of the album, despite the fact that the leak happened a while back. However, since the arrest, the numbers have shot way up, as the arrest has really only served to alert the public that the album is available for download on BitTorrent.”

Now what they’re implying here is that this may have all been an elaborate viral marketing campaign perpetrated by the band and their management. This actually does make perfect sense, but it still doesn’t explain why the FBI is involved or why a fan/illegal downloader could go to jail for years. And you thought this whole “Chinese Democracy” fiasco couldn’t get more ridiculous.

The “new” Guns N’ Roses single “Shackler’s Revenge” leaked just recently. It is to be included in Rock Band 2 and will mark the bands first official release of a song since 1999 (when “Oh My God” was released on a soundtrack that I can’t remember).

The song was posted as a YouTube video of bloopers, which was down but is now back up. The song, (I’m not sure why the title is related to pirates…), in my honest opinion is laughably bad. As some others have noted, it does indeed sound like Axl Rose just discovered Gravity Kills, or some other horrible Nine Inch Nails rip-off band from 1995 and replicated their sound on this track.

It is pretty apparent that Axl Rose is a psycho and this whole “Chinese Democracy” debacle has gone way too far. I’m still just waiting for someone to say it’s all a big joke, so far that hasn’t happened yet.

Last week, I reported on the leak of some more disappointing songs from Guns N’ Roses still unreleased Chinese Democracy album by a guy named Skwerl (a former employee of Universal), via his blog. Now, it seems Axl Rose’ management is spending some serious time and money in investigating the leak, can’t have those songs released right?

I think Axl Rose might be trying to do the world a great service, by going to such lengths to prevent people from hearing this record for 15 years. God bless him for that at least. The ridiculous and retarded Chinese Democracy saga continues…more info courtesy of Stereogum.

“First, about Skwerl. The guy’s a web designer who used to work in Universal’s distribution department. However he insists the CD tracks came to him via an “anonymous online source.” Rock Daily gets some quotage:

Yesterday Skwerl was surprised to find himself face to face with two FBI agents who paid a visit to his day job. “It was kind of an ambush,” Skwerl tells Rolling Stone. “When I came back from lunch they were waiting in the lobby for me. It’s a little creepy they know where I work.” Two young FBI officers, who Skwerl describes as “Mulder and Scully types,” questioned him for 15 minutes about where he got the tracks and made plans to visit his house at 7:00 a.m. this morning.”I wasn’t sure if they were going to come by with a warrant and trash the place, like in the movies,” he says. “It was nothing like that.” The FBI officials wanted to see the original files, but Skwerl erased them last week per instructions from Axl Rose’s attorneys. Skwerl ultimately gave them second-hand files that are now widely available on the Internet.

Guns N’ Roses haven’t released an album of original material since, oh around 1991. The band’s struggle to release their “Chinese Democracy” album have been pretty well publicized since 1994, when they began. The album remains unreleased.

Axl Rose has burned through around $14 million in production costs, supplied by Geffen/Interscope over the years, and has kicked out every original member of the band. He apparently recorded massive amounts of material, with an equally massive amount of musicians, a revolving door lineup.

Supposedly, he wanted the album to be one of the “greatest albums ever made”, whatever that means. This, to him, apparently meant layers of electric guitars, superfluous industrial noises and other somewhat ridiculous concepts. This is pretty apparent as large parts of mastered tracks have just now leaked.

Tracks had been leaked before, but not as complete as the current leak. Also, it appears this current leak features a few songs not previously leaked earlier. Needless to say, its a huge letdown, which I believe everyone expected. And at this point these “new songs” are probably 10 years old anyway. This album has become something of a running joke, something I thought Guns N’ Roses were anyway.

Here’s a link to Stereogum who have YouTube versions of 3 of the leaked songs.