The "industrial" thing ended up being a bit overstated, though. After all that hoo-ha, Chinese Democracy ended up being a hard rock record with some industrial touches on individual songs – and most of the songs ended up cleaving so close to the hard rock template of the old band that Slash and Duff have no qualms playing them on stage (hell, Duff played Shackler's Revenge on stage with the Chinese Democracy-era band).

Axl planned to evolve the band's sound, as musicians tend to do – does The White Album sound like the work of the same band that produced Please Please Me? 90s!Slash wanted to trap the band in a rut of regressive, bog-standard hard-rock riffs at exactly the moment that new musical movements like grunge, industrial and nu-metal were shaking up the rock landscape – and if GN'R had released Slash's preferred album after TSI? it would've sunk without trace. I don't think Axl is always right by any means, but I think he had a better handle on what the band needed to do back then than the other members (I also think it's telling that Duff, probably the most level-headed member of the band, stuck around longest and was the first classic-era member to put out feelers to Axl during the Chinese Democracy era).