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 been fired and replaced by third and fourth-tier managers, and the seasoned players are all performing at a sub-par level. But even if the team finishes with a 61-101 record (i.e. the 2008 Seattle Mariners), the fans say it’s a “rebuilding year”, because lessons were being learned, and things will be better next time. Queensryche’s eighth studio album, Tribe, is something I’d consider a “rebuilding album”. It’s not great, but it shows hints of promise, or at least enough for hard-core fans to not completely dismiss the band.
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Posts Tagged Queensryche
Queensryche – Tribe (2003)
Mar 31
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 sound and voice, but added the element of a timely and complex plot that tied together the 15 tracks on this epic album.
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Queensryche – Empire (1990)
Mar 15
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, Empire, in the spring of 1990. Would it be a sequel to the concept album? Would we find out who killed Mary? Would it be an even heavier rocking album? Or would the band to in another direction? Luckily, the band chose the latter, and did an exceptional job of reaching the next level in their musical definition.
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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 material, and was essentially useless; the 2000 compilation Greatest Hits was barely passable, with two non-album tracks. So is the 2007 stab at the same thing just another ploy to get the masses to buy another “Silent Lucidity plus other tracks” CD?
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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 hits compilation of the same name.) It’s not a bad song, and an okay choice for a single, so it appears in original studio album format on this four-song CD.
There’s also a new song as a b-side, somewhat rare for the band, who have only let a handful of cuts drop from their studio albums. This one’s called “Chasing Blue Sky”, and it’s a very moody and laid-back number, written by Geoff Tate and drummer Scott Rockenfield. It actually sounds much more like something Tate would later do on his self-titled solo album a few years later. I’m not a big fan of this track myself, partially because it’s so wallowy and uninteresting, and because it’s the first Queensryche song to have a harmonica solo in it, which is just plain stupid. But prior to all of the albums being re-released with bonus tracks (and, I guess, before Napster, Kazaa, and the like made it easy to just steal these kind of tracks without much effort), this was a somewhat elusive track to find, which means people were willing to pay twenty bucks for four songs.
The album’s also rounded out by two cuts from that 1992 MTV Unplugged show that was broadcast exactly once and then milked by record labels but never released in a proper fashion. Here you get “Silent Lucidity” (probably the big money shot for most part-time fans of the band) and “The Killing Words”. (I think you can now get all of the tracks for the unplugged show if you buy a certain number of the re-released albums, but I haven’t done the math to figure it out; there might be one or two tracks missing. The whole show, including false starts and second takes, is widely bootlegged.)
Trivia: the liner notes say “Queensryche is still:”, and then Chris Degarmo left about ten seconds later.
The whole idea of buying this is somewhat moot now. If you buy the new re-release of HitNF you get all three bonus tracks here, plus the unplugged version of “I Will Remember”. But back in my day, when eBay didn’t exist and you couldn’t file-share this stuff or buy the re-release, you had to buy this. It’s an okay grouping of tracks, but only for completists.
Rating: 8
Queensryche – Q2K (1999)
Jan 27
When I was in college, I dated a girl who was probably a bigger Queensryche fan than me. And when listening to a snippet of their music, she’d sometimes say things like “Oh, that’s a Chris song”, and roll her eyes, apparently bemoaning the songwriting ability of guitarist Chris DeGarmo. The habit made me realize that up until that point, I’d never even considered how the power structure within the band operated. Queensryche has two guitar players, who initially formed the band, but they are usually both referred to as “lead/rhythm guitar” and without studying some videos or going to a bunch of live shows, it’s not apparent who’s taking what solos. Contrast that with a band like Guns N’ Roses, where you know Slash plays the lead and Izzy’s on the rhythm guitar. So after almost ten years of not thinking about it, I wondered, who was the driving force behind the band? Who was in charge? Was Geoff Tate the ringleader, or just the guy brought in by the real brains of the band to front them? Who was the John and Paul, and who was the Ringo?
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There are a few different reasons a group would record an album of cover tunes. Bands just out of the gate might not have enough original material written, and need to fall back on the classics to come up with a CD’s worth of tunes. Other bands feel a need to “pay tribute” and record their own interpretations of their influences’ hit tunes. Some might want to do something weird. And others are looking for a quick way to make a buck, or, even better, get out of an album’s worth of obligation to a record deal. (See also the main reason live albums are recorded.) So which of these reasons best describe why Queensryche went into the studio and laid down eleven cover tunes for this album? Good question.
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Every band has to start somewhere. For prog-rockers Queensryche, they begin with a very NWOBHM-styled four-song EP. And it wasn’t even the same band initially – they were known as The Mob then, and Geoff Tate was enlisted to sign on the project, prior to him taking the full-time role as a frontman. The band recorded this release primarily as a demo, in a series of graveyard shift recording sessions at a local studio. They shopped it around with no avail, but when Kim and Diana Harris, owners of a Seattle record store, got a listen, they formed 206 records (206 being Seattle’s area code), managed the group, changed the band’s name, and released the demo as an EP in 1983. It got a huge following in Europe (thanks to Kerrang! magazine), and by the end of the year, the band signed on with EMI records and became a national act. Read the rest of this entry »
Look, I’ll start off the review by saying the obvious, and scaring off the 90% of you that just won’t get this album. First, this isn’t a Queensryche album. Second, it’s not even really a metal album. And if you best remember Tate as a guy racing through eight octaves of scales like an opera star on crystal meth, you aren’t going to like this at all. If any of these three things disturb you, go ahead and say “man, what a gyp”, and go back to downloading Dream Theater bootlegs. Read the rest of this entry »
After the 1988 release of Operation: Mindcrime, Queensryche weren’t in a position to put on a lavish stage show or three-hour
headlining concert yet; in fact, they spent their time opening for Metallica on the epic …And Justice For All tour. (Unfortunately, they were only on the first leg of this tour; by the time I got to see Metallica supporting this album in the summer of 1989, we had to endure The Cult as an opener.) But after the huge success of 1990’s Empire, the band had enough clout to book an extensive headlining tour, which included all of the video screens needed to produce a show that could feature the rock-opera album in its entirety.
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