Category Archives: reviews

Rush – Feedback (2004)

A Rush album of covers? Okay, I didn’t buy this when it came out, because I’d already seen all of the car commercials that featured these songs. It’s always amazing how old hard rock goes from the AOR stations to … Continue reading

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Queensryche – Tribe (2003)

In the sports world, there’s a concept called “a rebuilding year”. It’s when your team has fallen apart: the star talent has been traded elsewhere, the new kids from the minors are still learning the ropes, the coaches have all … Continue reading

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DC Slater – Altitude (2007)

One of the downsides of doing a lot of album reviews for a zine is that you have to listen to a lot of crap that takes a lot of effort to get through once, let alone enough times to … Continue reading

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Queensryche – Operation: Mindcrime (1988)

Who killed Mary? That’s the takeaway on probably the finest concept album ever created by a prog-metal band. Before Queensryche’s third album, the band already had an impressive collection of unique metal material, but Operation: Mindcrime not only progressed their … Continue reading

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Queensryche – Empire (1990)

How do you follow up one of the best prog metal concept albums of all time? That was the monumental task in front of Queensryche when they finished touring in support of Operation:Mindcrime and started recording their fourth full release, … Continue reading

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Metallica – Garage Inc. (1998)

So the Garage Days Re-Revisited EP is long out of print, and is going for a bajillion dollars a bootlegged copy on eBay ten years later. The band decided it would be a good idea to re-issue the record, but … Continue reading

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ARZ – Solomon’s Key (2008)

When I hear that a group of musicians first got together in a Yes tribute band, the last thing I expect is anything heavy.  The first ten seconds of the new ARZ album, Solomon’s Key, completely changed that opinion for … Continue reading

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Queensryche – Sign of the Times: The Best of Queensryche (2007)

My first thought when I heard Queensryche was releasing another compilation album was “christ, didn’t they just do this fifteen minutes ago?” Okay, it was more like four years earlier, but the Capitol Records 12-track Classic Masters contained no new … Continue reading

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Fractal – Sequitur (2009)

A fractal is a geometric shape that has a fine structure at arbitrarily small scales, and is too irregular to be easily described in traditional Euclidean geometric language. That’s also a decent description of the latest release from the Bay-area … Continue reading

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Queensryche – Sign of the Times (1997)

The first single from Queensryche’s Here in the Now Frontier album was the first song on the album, “Sign of the Times”, the somewhat political/societal rocker written by Chris DeGarmo. (This is not to be confused with the 2007 greatest … Continue reading

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