They were serious? It looks like Guns N' Roses really is going to be a working band again. Reports from the continent this week have Axl & Co. booking gigs around the U.K. The BBC reports today that the hard rocking band -- pretty much AWOL since the early 90s -- is going to play the "Download Festival" in Derbyshire, Great Britain, on June 11. Another report has GNR playing Dublin a few days earlier.

Axl has been working on the band's latest album -- Chinese Democracy -- for a few years now (umm, nine years actually), but promised fans they'd hear the music this year. (Which will happen first? "Chinese Democracy" or Democracy in China? The band hasn't released an original album since '93.)

Actually, three cuts from the album -- "There Was a Time," "I.R.S." and "Better" -- have already found their way to the Internet. Boston radio station WAAF put the songs on heavy rotation until a court order from GNR put an end to the fun, according to E! Online.

Howard Stern, on his morning satellite radio show, critiqued the GNR comeback this week, concluding with the rhetorical question: When did Axl go "from so cool to being a d--che?"