Just saying that yer right, there's lots of guitar playing folks out there who are a lot "better" than Slash, but for all their ability, they never developed a "style" that stands out the way he did- many of the absolute GREATEST technical players are damn near interchangeable....
As for this new album, I am hardly surprised that it is sounding like it sucks donkey balls. If you work on an album for more than 2 years, IMO, you should dump all the tracks (even the ghost, click and bed tracks) and work on something totally different until the material feels "right" again, then have at it. NO good can possibly come out of tweaking, polishing and re-recording tracks (mostly to reflect personnel changes) over the course of a decade, I swear this
