Guns N’ Roses have recorded enough material “two or three albums”, according to guitarist Richard Fortus. Whether that means the world is set for a Use Your Illusion-style double release, or condemned to a Chinese Democracy-style wait, however, remains unclear.
Speaking to the French online magazine VerdamMnis, Fortus said he had been involved in writing the new material. “There’s so much stuff that was done,” he said. “We’ve all been handing files back and forth to one another. We so look forward to getting at it seriously and [releasing] a new album as soon as possible.”
However, Fortus’s bandmate Dizzy Reed said when the music would be released was another matter. “We just don’t know yet,” he said. “Only Axl [Rose] knows and he’s very secretive.”
Between 1987 and 1993, Guns N’ Roses released five studio albums – including the two Use Your Illusion double albums on the same day in 1991– but then kept fans waiting till 2008 for their sixth record, Chinese Democracy. One of the problems with taking so long over the album, as Alexis Petridis noted in his Guardian review, was that “some tracks mark the way whole genres have risen and fallen in the time it took Rose to pull his finger out. If the World features echoes of trip-hop and nu metal, while Shackler’s Revenge bears the influence of the Prodigy and Nine Inch Nails, presumably because both were the latest thing at different points in its gestation.”
