"Chinese Democracy" was met with generally positive reviews. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 64, based on 28 reviews. "Los Angeles Times" writer Ann Powers called it "a test for contemporary ears" and "a cyborgian blend of pop expressiveness, traditional rock bravado and Brian Wilson-style beautiful weirdness". Chuck Klosterman, writing for "The A.V. Club", praised the vocals and guitar parts but criticized some production elements. "Rolling Stone" writer David Fricke commended Rose's unrestrained approach and called it "a great, audacious, unhinged and uncompromising hard-rock record". "Rolling Stone" later ranked the album number 12 on its year-end list of 2008's best albums. Jon Dolan from "Blender" found some of the music "ludicrous" and other parts "brilliant", writing that "these aren't songs, they're suites, energetic and skittering and unpredictable hard rock hydras cut with miasmic industrial grind, stadium rattling metal solos, electronic drift and hip-hop churn." Writing for "MSN Music", Robert Christgau said Rose succeeds on "his own totally irrelevant terms" and added, "Since he's no longer capable of leading young white males astray, this effort isn't just pleasurable artistically. It's touching on a human level." CTV News compared the production to the Wall of Sound style of Phil Spector.