A vote for 'Democracy': Axl Rose remains vital

When it comes to Guns N' Roses' 13-years-in-the-making "Chinese Democracy," out today, there's really only one question that matters: Was it worth the wait?

The answer has to be no, of course not, how could it be? That said, it's an exhilarating album. Seriously, after finally hearing these 14 tracks in their finished form I was so energized I wanted to climb a mountain. I felt a grudging admiration for Axl Rose's tortured artistry - and could almost imagine forgiving his make-'em-wait diva attitude at shows.

"Democracy" may not have the metal band's classic lineup, but lone original GNR member and group mastermind Rose has crafted the kind of record that makes superlatives tumble like a waterfall: exciting, urgent, frenzied, heavy, melodic, quirky, melodramatic, and occasionally overbaked. It demands that you hit the repeat button after the first listen for both the hard-rocking highs and the head-scratching lows. In other words, it's everything you want - and a little you don't.

Happily, Rose and his coterie of co-writers retain some of the hallmarks of 1987's "Appetite for Destruction" and 1991's twin "Use Your Illusion" albums.

Melt-your-face guitar solos? Check out the attack on the title track and the lumbering "I.R.S.," blistering guitar courtesy of Robin Finck and Bucket-head.

Candied, singable pop melodies wrapped in barbed-wire arrangements? Listen to the catchy hook and heated wah-wah guitar licks of "Better."

Left-field experiments just crazy enough to work? Consider the combo of delicate 12-string acoustic flights and deep bass funk of "If the World."

And Rose does it all without sounding as if he's been hermetically sealed off from the rest of popular music (witness the hip-hop-tinged rhythm tracks) or forgotten his own history (behold the throwback machine gun riffage).

As vital as "Democracy" is, the labor-intensiveness of the process is evident in the instruments piled on top of one another. Given this appetite for construction, it's easy to envision Rose huddled over a mixing board punching in the tangled guitar solos, windswept orchestral passages, and layers of backing vocals with a maniacal Frankenstein-ian glee. But at least the singer-songwriter and his army of engineers and musicians managed to keep the basic outline of the songs discernible through the clutter.

The biggest obstacle to unadulterated enjoyment may be Rose's voice. The familiar high-pitched caterwaul now more pinched and mottled comes as a shock after so many years without it. And he takes it through different modulations, mostly on the lower end, over the course of the album. One minute he's the familiar bratty ranter on the frenetic "Scraped," the next he's affecting some weird, Ozzy-post-etiquette-training elocution on "Street of Dreams." (The song itself is pretty sweet, though: a grandiose, Elton John-style piano ballad with an intimate sentiment).

There are those who had given up caring if the album would ever surface, but now that Rose has finally decided to spread "Democracy" around, it's a pleasant surprise to find how welcome it is.

Sarah Rodman can be reached at srodman@globe.com.