I find the production on AFD's a bit dated; the drums in particular. I can't explain exactly what it is about those drums, but there's something, some reverb or the way they've been mic'ed up that makes them sound very, very 80s. It doesn't help that the album's never been properly remastered to give it a bit more punch. I'd be fascinated to hear the 1999 AFD redux - it's the thing I'm most curious about from the Chinese Democracy sessions. I'd even, I think, take a leak of that over a leak of Checkmate.

Of all the albums, the one that sounds least dated is the acoustic portion of Lies - probably because it's difficult for a stripped-down acoustic track to date.

UYI hasn't dated nearly as badly as AFD, IMO. It feels a bit redolent of the early 90s in places, but that's probably just my mind free-associating when I hear it, and conjuring up memories of Nintendo and Terminator 2 and Slash in plaid shirts.

The Spaghetti Incident... well, let's just say that Izzy's absence really makes that album suffer. I'd love to hear the original mixes, with Izzy in place of Gilby.

The jury's still out on Chinese Democracy, really. I think it sounds very of the moment, though - which is interesting, given that it was recorded over the course of a decade.

As Ron has pointed out, it's like you're skipping from, say, Meet the Beatles to The White Album without hearing the intervening years of musical development; all that stuff is locked down in Axl's vaults. It's a crying shame that we'll never get to hear that material; I'd love to hear the sessions that gave us the so-called 1999 versions of TWAT and IRS...

He hasn't managed to get the lyrics to Civil War right *once*. He also has a tendency to fuck up the old VR tracks - where Scott would deliberately tweak a line so it reads differently in the second chorus than in the first, Myles just sings the original version twice. If that makes any sense.

I dunno, it just feels lazy to me. There's a reason those lyrics were written like that, and it feels like Myles is just singing them from memory, like he's doing karaoke or something.

And yeah, he doesn't have the stage presence of Axl or Scott. It's like he's seen rockstars doing this shit on TV and he knows you're meant to flail around with the mic stand or whatever, but it always seems a bit forced.

I mean, I'm sure he's a nice guy and all, Slash picked him and he's a better singer than I'll ever be, so who am I to criticise? It's just... well, I can see why Duff nixed the idea of him fronting VR.

That said, I'd imagine the two singers in the running are Myles and Franky Perez. Corey Taylor would be a good pick, though I still maintain that the best person for the gig would be Chester Bennington, not that he'll do it...

I hope to Christ the prospective singer isn't Myles Kennedy. Can't be bothered to learn the lyrics to the old songs, has the weirdest singing voice I've ever heard, no stage presence, and he looks like Jim Carrey.

In a right and just world, Chester Bennington would get the gig; he's got a similar stage presence to Scott, but he's got Axl's pipes.

Ashba really does overdo it with the doodles on his guitars, doesn't he? It's like a 14-year-old scribbling skulls on his schoolbooks...