Was Chinese Democracy worth the wait? When we got our hands on a bunch of damn-near finished songs in June, we said it was. And we had always suspected it was going to be, for years leading up to that moment, as rumors and rough demos trickled out of whatever mansion / studio / nudie bar Axl Rose was holed up in.

After all this time, all fans east of psychotic had the common sense to at least suspect that the big secret had been built up too much, that if and when the moment of truth finally came, it would likely be an anticlimax. Of course, the most amazing thing about this album is that it’s in our hands.

Walking into the tour-closing Guns N’ Roses show in Universal City, I had good cause for the skepticism I felt. With only one original member, no new material released in over a decade and a tornado of negative hype surrounding the mere name, the modern version of Guns N’ Roses should, by all accounts, be a recipe for colossal failure.

How do you replace the dirty swagger, the serpentine energy, the explosive chemistry of the band that brought an endgame to hair metal? The vacancies left by the original members seem too vast to be occupied by anyone else, and it’s been the upside of a decade since Axl Rose’s signature wailing dominated the rock landscape. I fully expected the same ugly disappointment and vicarious embarrassment I felt while watching GNR’s “big comeback” performance on the 2002 MTV Music Awards, where my attention was split between Axl’s surgically altered wax-museum face and his embarrassingly off-key performance.

Since hitting the scene with a debut EP in 2004 and a follow-up full length album in 2006, 8mm have hit their stride and are finally getting some well-deserved attention. Their songs No Way Back and Forever And Ever Amen were featured on a December 2006 episode of the WB show One Tree Hill. The exposure’s worked wonders for the band, and last year was a busy one- they covered Carly Simon’s Nobody Does It Better for the Mr. & Mrs. Smith soundtrack, were featured as one of 2007’s “Top Bands You Need To Know And Love And Worship” by Alternative Press and have had their songs on various MTV shows that, like nearly all shows on MTV, have nothing at all to do with music.

But to hell with all that. The brass tacks are that 8mm is a standout independent band doing things their own way, and we love what we’re hearing. That’s why we called up Sean and Juliette last week for a ranting, impassioned discussion about their inspirations and aspirations, the chaotic state of the music industry and Axl Rose’s joke-telling prowess.

Guns N’ Roses was the first band I ever loved. For a decade and a half, I’ve been among the vast legions waiting for the release of Chinese Democracy, Axl Rose’s eternally delayed, $13 million Frankenstein revival of GNR that we all started to believe would never see the light of day. In a blinding burst of bad-assery, nine mastered, finished tracks from Chinese Democracy showed up on some website (we forget the name) for a heartbeat, until GNR management came calling with threats of litigation annihilation, and even federal agents got involved.

Well, to say that I’m living up to my reputation today is an understatement. I’d like to share with you 9 tracks from the new Guns N’ Roses album, Chinese Democracy. These are mastered, finished versions that you probably haven’t heard. I always said that the more that Axl and Geffen jerked around trying to figure out how to release this finally finished album that we’ve all been waiting over 13 years for, the greater the chances would be that it would slip out of a pressing plant or office somewhere and wind up in the hands of some asshole with a blog. So… Hey, I told you so.