Queensrÿche - The classics of thinking-man's metal

It's 1981: Geoff Tate, a young student from Seattle in love with Pink Floyd and progressive rock, is recruited by Chris De Garmo and Michael Wilton to sing in their budding metal band; Eddie Jackson (bass) and Scott Rockenfield (drums) are brought in to complete the line-up. So far, nothing out of the ordinary. What you'd expect as the standard trajectory for such a project is the usual underground apprenticeship, a reputation built up in local clubs and circuits, and a slow rise to national prominence - in short, the same old story. But normality doesn't suit Queensrÿche: showing the first symptoms of their innately meditative nature, the band shuts itself away feverishly in the rehearsal room for an entire year, emerging with a self-produced demo that would be released through a small local amateur label.

The band's name (and the title of this mini-album) is a garbled version of the opening track's title, "Queen Of The Reich", a robust rocker that closely recalls Judas Priest, with a great vocal performance from Tate; "Nightrider", on the other hand, is much closer to the style of Iron Maiden. There's also room for a classic: "The Lady Wore Black", suspended between martial cadences and a leaden neo-gothic atmosphere. All in all, an excellent calling card for the band's promising talents, promptly noticed by EMI America, who reissued it in 1983, offering the band a prestigious record deal.

The band's debut long player is The Warning (1984), produced by James Guthrie, famous for his work with Pink Floyd (and perhaps chosen by the band precisely for that reason), a solid and menacing album that is also varied and thoroughly enjoyable. The only real shortcoming is, truth be told, Guthrie's production itself: too soft, it only ends up weighing down the drive of the sound and at times genuinely clips the wings of the songs' potential (the splendid "Take Hold Of The Flame" is one of the biggest victims), stripping all depth from the sonic mix.

Otherwise, the songwriting approach is far less stereotyped than on the Ep: the sound is closer to the cerebral hard-prog of Rush ("En Force", where Tate's voice attempts to mimic Geddy Lee's piercing wail) than to mainstream models, and the whole album is steeped in a wonderfully hazy, dark atmosphere (it deserved a far better cover!). "No Sanctuary", one of the finest ballads the band ever wrote, and the mini-suite (if we can call it that) "Roads To Madness" are enough to convince the listener they're not dealing with just another flashy, throwaway band, while "NM 156" already hints at the sweltering atmosphere that would envelop the next album.

If the controversial single "Gonna Get Close To You" helped detractors drag the band through the mud, hastily (and provocatively) filing them away as yet another hair-metal act (and the band's image at the time didn't help), a full listen to Rage For Order (1986) should be enough on its own to dispel any doubt. The technological nightmare glimpsed between the lines of the first album becomes a terrifying reality: synths, electronic drums, stripped-down arrangements, and a structural simplification aimed at maximum expressiveness turn this record into an icy journey into the darkest corners of the unconscious; "I Dream In Infrared" and "Walk In The Shadow" are the anthems of this rigorous masterpiece, while the anguish reaches its peak in the gothic crescendo that opens "Neue Regel". It's perhaps not too bold to claim that the choirs of "London" or the deranged structure of "Screaming In Digital" are more terrifying than any nonsensical mythological tale or pseudo-satanic idiocy.

Queensrÿche's sickness is as subtle as their art, and as plain as the shrillness of human passions: this makes Rage For Order a gem of 80s metal - perhaps aged a little poorly (its impact is often hard to grasp) - bested only, perhaps, by its even more pretentious successor.

But the band's unbridled ambition only finds full realization in the massive concept album Operation: Mindcrime (1988), one of the best heavy records of the decade. The plot is pretentious enough and packed with clichés: Nikki, a drug addict, falls into the graces of a madman with easily guessable shady purposes, the fearsome Dr. X (yes, it's a ridiculous name), who hypnotizes him and "hires" him as his personal hitman; in exchange Dr. X protects him and introduces him to Mary, a young prostitute turned nun (!); but this relationship becomes an obstacle to the evil doctor's plans, as it is slowly making Nikki self-aware and pulling him out of X's mental control. X orders Nikki to kill Mary, but, once there to carry out the task, the young man can't bring himself to go through with it (though if I'm not mistaken he does rape her, or something along those lines); however, some time later he finds her dead anyway and goes mad with grief. The police arrest him and take him to hospital: this is the situation at the start of the album, while the story is told through numerous flashbacks.

Luckily the solidity of the music lends credibility to the script, and the cohesion of the work saves it from its many loose threads: "Revolution Calling", a splendid anthem driven by Wilton and DeGarmo's masterful guitar interplay and a Tate more passionate than ever (the concept idea is, first and foremost, his own brainchild), "Speak", a wild and reckless charge, the splendid, cadenced "Spreading The Disease", and the almost funky title track, which recalls the best of Led Zeppelin, form a frighteningly effective opening run, paving the way for the lyrical surges of "The Mission" and, above all, "Suite Sister Mary", suspended between a scent of incense and a dread of death, between an ethereal chanting of hymns and the overwhelming physicality of the situation, in the splendid duet between Tate and Pamela Moore (who plays, of course, Mary).

Other great moments include "The Needle Lies", at breakneck speed over an instantly catchy chorus, or "I Don't Believe In Love", also released as a successful single, alongside the closing lament of "Eyes Of A Stranger". A classic with a capital C.

The weight of a work of such substance bears down on the band: the first tensions between De Garmo and Tate (perhaps due to the latter's excessive need for the spotlight) become apparent and give rise to Empire (1990), a messy record, one could say the opposite of its predecessor: where that one was rigorously arranged within the fixed structure of a concept, this one is a sprawling collection of songs, thrown together haphazardly in a kind of chronic confusion. Meanwhile the sound has softened, perhaps to exploit their moment of peak visibility and win over a new fanbase, perhaps unconsciously; the most conventional tracks are also the most boring ("Another Rainy Night", an unbearable AOR-tinged dirge, or the crude "Della Brown"), and the band wastes much of its potential chasing an appealing commercial sound ("Jet City Woman"). Still, a few aces remain up their sleeve, whether the ballad "Silent Lucidity" (the best song Pink Floyd never wrote, hugely effective on the charts too, thanks to heavy rotation on MTV), or the powerful, multicolored farce of "Best I Can", or the grandiloquent epic sweep of the title track (which by now borders on self-parody). The rest is surprisingly below standard.

De Garmo's outsized ego once again takes over for the band's most introspective record, the granite-like Promised Land (1994), which marks a brief rebirth (at least formally) and an unexpected evolution of Queensrÿche's sound: ever darker atmospheres, lyrics heavy with anguish, a journey into the most intimate recesses of the human psyche. Too bad the songwriting isn't always up to the task: the most successful tracks are the evocative "I Am I", driven by a sturdy riff with an Eastern flavor, the harsh ballad "Bridge", which tells of a difficult father-son relationship, and the morbid, sensual sweetness of "Lady Jane". The riskier experiments ("My Global Mind", "Disconnected") fall flat, as do the more fleeting "Damaged", "One More Time" and the stifling title track.

Yet it takes only three years to see the other side of the coin: with Hear In The Now Frontier (1997) the tensions have become incurable. De Garmo tries to reclaim his role in shaping the band's sound, but all he can come up with is the bland pop of "All I Want" (which he sings himself), while Tate too seems to be floundering, leaning toward a watered-down, cut-rate post-grunge ("Cuckoo's Nest", the still enjoyable "Sign Of The Times").

The band's sunniest record turns out to be their biggest failure, and their first real misstep (if we set aside the pompous Empire). De Garmo will leave the band after the lukewarm promotional tour, and Tate will finally take on the role of leader once and for all.

Yet the fog enveloping the band's output is far from lifting; if anything, Q2K (1999) remains the lowest point of Queensrÿche's entire discography, a swampy slip into insipid music devoid of any artistic spark, conceptual or otherwise. The band enters the new millennium with a colossal flop: "Liquid Sky", "When The Rain Falls", "Falling Down", the slimy "Sacred Ground" are utterly flavorless songs, lacking any bite, barely saved by the band's craftsmanship (which, deprived of De Garmo's vigorous phrasing, falls back on saccharine, stereotyped arrangements), while things tip into outright ridiculous with tracks like "Wot Kinda Man", a song that in 1988 probably would never have made it past studio horsing-around.

Some have written that Queensrÿche are dead: how can you blame them?

2001's Live Evolution is a good chance to enjoy the extreme variety of the band's repertoire: tracks pulled from the Ep ("The Lady Wore Black", the inevitable anthem "Queen Of The Reich") and from every subsequent album (Mindcrime is revisited almost in full): a good record, but it adds (nor does it aim to add) nothing new.

The enthusiasm surrounding the release of Tribe (2003), on which De Garmo collaborates, looks, in hindsight, less and less justified: no wonder it didn't last long. Aside from the stunning single "Open", what we have here is a rather blurry record, one that tries to reclaim past glories but fails miserably. Amid ethnic flourishes ("Desert Dance", "Rhythm Of Hope") and more classic tracks ("Losing Myself"), the feeling is one of a lot of smoke and very little fire: slapdash, scribbled together, it's a terribly lazy album (perhaps less so than their most recent ones), leaving very little left to discover after the first listen.

The acoustic live album The Art Of Live (2004) is yet another failed experiment: there was no need for another live album so soon, and the performances are so amorphous and impersonal that they make you long for the studio records. The only points of interest are the (not particularly successful) covers of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" and the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again".

In 2004 Geoff Tate announces that the band is working on a sequel to Operation: Mindcrime; critics and fans alike turn up their noses, dismissing it as a pure cash-grab (and the undersigned was once of that persuasion too). We have to wait until 2006 for the result, but it's well worth it: shaking off all weariness, the band welcomes Nikki, now out of prison, to tell the conclusion of his hallucinated tragedy.

It's a great comeback, the kind that happens very rarely: the material is the best since the first installment, and Tate's skilled orchestration manages to make us forget every past misstep. A duet with Ronnie James Dio, who plays the villainous Dr. X ("The Chase"), along with a whole series of new anthems destined, we hope, to earn their well-deserved immortality ("I'm American", "One Foot In The Grave", "Speed Of Light", "All The Promises"), breathe renewed vigor into the dry sap of Queensrÿche's catalogue.

We hope this isn't a swan song for a band that had much to teach the international metal scene, having patented a style that's now become a classic; we hope, on the solid grounds of Operation: Mindcrime II, that Queensrÿche return to being a guarantee of quality for anyone seeking something more in "hard" rock than bulging muscles, satanism and ridiculous hairstyles.

Towards the end of 2007, Mindcrime At The Moore saw the light of day, an ambitious live project released on DVD, soon followed by a double CD with an almost identical tracklist. The event took place at Seattle's charming Moore Theatre, which proved the perfect setting for a full-blown staging of the two Operation: Mindcrime albums, complete with actors and extras, with an inspired Geoff Tate and Pamela Moore bringing to life the travails of protagonists Nikki and Sister Mary. The concert opens with an exceptional triptych: "I Remember Now", "Anarchy-X" and the magnificent "Revolution Calling". The whole first part, which revisits the original Operation: Mindcrime, is monumental, and Mike Stone, DeGarmo's replacement on guitar, delivers an excellent performance, one he confirms in the second part of the concert, where the songs from Operation: Mindcrime II come to life. Whether it's the live dimension (surely) or the sheer spectacle the band puts on, the fact remains that the songs from the 1988 sequel turn out, with a few minor disappointments (the absence of Ronnie James Dio, who duets with Tate on "The Chase" on the album), to be fluid and immersive, carried as they are by Geoff and Pamela's voices, reaching their peak in the powerful "A Murderer", in which, incidentally, bassist Eddie Jackson's surprising voice can be heard in the backing vocals. The live set closes with "Walk In The Shadows" and "Jet City Woman", now-historic songs that send the crowd into a frenzy. Mindcrime At The Moore is a great live moment for Queensrÿche, certainly a far cry from the legendary Livecrime of 1991, but one that shows a band in fine form across every component, including the theatrical one, which is anything but secondary in this excellent work. A commercial, ambitious operation? Perhaps so, but one pulled off extremely well.

The sour notes begin to make themselves heard with Sign of the Times: The Best of Queensrÿche, released at the end of August of that same year. The compilation offers an excursion through the band's output, starting from the 1982 EP and reaching the recent Operation: Mindcrime II. The tracklist focuses mainly on Empire and Promised Land, while the original Operation: Mindcrime is somewhat sidelined (only two tracks: "I Don't Believe In Love" and "Eyes Of A Stranger"), perhaps because of the recent release of the aforementioned live album. There's also room for a few tracks from Hear In The Now Frontier and Q2K (just one song, thankfully!), albums that didn't exactly set the world on fire, while Rage For Order is rather snubbed. The Collectors Edition includes a second disc made up of rarities (demo versions, unreleased tracks and bonus tracks) and a new song, "Justified", which turns out to be an embarrassing filler.

2007 closes with another rather ambiguous work: Take Cover. When a band puts out an entire album of covers, it's usually for one of two reasons: to keep a presence with its fans, or to put together a work that, in some way, reinterprets and revisits part of its own musical heritage. In the case of Queensrÿche, both reasons probably apply, even though, after a live album and a best of, their market presence was already more than well established. Looking at the compilation's tracklist, though, it's the second motive that stands out: a tribute to bands that, for better or worse, can be traced in the Seattle band's sound. "Take Cover" moves through a variety of genres, from the heavy metal of Black Sabbath's "Heaven And Hell" to Italian opera, passing through the rock of Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Still, Nash & Young, thus tracing a broad path along which the band ambitiously attempts to define itself. The problem is that many of the covers on offer fail to take off. While Pink Floyd's "Welcome To The Machine" works very well, with its heavy, dark edge, "Heaven On Their Minds", taken from the soundtrack of "Jesus Christ Superstar", is given arrangements that make it rather flat and monotonous. The same goes for Queen's "Innuendo", while The O'Jays' "For The Love Of Money" is decidedly poor. The best cover of the bunch remains Black Sabbath's "Neon Knights", while Peter Gabriel's "Red Rain" and Police's "Synchronicity II" are far from bad. The rest of the album stays firmly within the realm of the ordinary (setting aside the U2 cover, presented in a live version that's decidedly too long), given the musicians' skill as they tackle a version of "Odissea", a composition by Carlo Marrale (Matia Bazar) written for tenors Marcelo Alvarez and Salvatore Licitra, in which Tate shows off the full power of his vocal cords. Ultimately, Take Cover remains, precisely, an album of covers, with (few) highs and (many) lows.

2008 is the year spent preparing the new album, which sees the light of day at the end of March 2009, in the wake of the departure from the band of Mike Stone, a guitarist of great talent and ability who, while not on DeGarmo's level, had at least musically cushioned the shock of the latter's departure. American Soldier, the 2009 album, is the product of a large-scale marketing operation undertaken by Geoff Tate, who, starting from the second half of 2008, had begun releasing previews and trivia about the individual songs and the concept, even going so far as to set up a phone line through which fans could keep up with the state of the album in question. Unfortunately, the anticipation and expectations built up were, at least in part, let down by the full-length itself. American Soldier, a concept album about war, is a highly refined and sophisticated work, in which the metal component of the band's early days is almost entirely absent and in which, moreover, a notable artistic maturity can be felt. However, this is no longer the Queensrÿche of Promised Land, let alone of Operation: Mindcrime.

Something, in short, had definitely changed, and not for the better...

Two years pass, and in 2011 along comes Dedicated To Chaos, an extremely fitting title. It is, in fact, an uneven work, indecipherable from every angle, built on the rhythm section more than ever before at the expense of melody, with Tate's voice at times unrecognizable, smothered by sampling and various filters in an indecipherable muddle. It's an album conceived — it seems Tate himself stated as much — as a collection of unrelated downloads, perfectly in line with today's dominant online world, and the language running through the songs confirms as much. Be that as it may, it's an absolutely mediocre work.

The discontent, already simmering within the band due to an increasingly Tate-centric and nepotistic management style, finally explodes on April 12, 2012. At a band meeting that Tate does not attend, the rest of the group decides to fire Miranda and Susan Tate — respectively the frontman's daughter and wife — from their roles as managers of the fan club and of the band itself. "Over the last 3 years, we got to the point of realizing we no longer had any say in the band. Everything was run by the singer and his family", Wilton would later state.

Two days later, the situation deteriorates ahead of a band show in São Paulo, Brazil, when Tate and the rest of the band clash in a violent argument that continues even during the concert, amid spitting and threats.

The rest of the band then decides to expel Tate from the group, laying the groundwork for a legal dispute which, through a preliminary ruling pending a final verdict, reaches a baffling decision: both bands will be allowed to tour under the name Queensryche until it's decided who gets to use the brand.

This decision thus leads, the following year, to the paradoxical situation of two albums being released almost simultaneously with the same name on the cover.

In May 2013, "Frequency Unknown" is released, hastily recorded by Geoff Tate in just 6 weeks, with a crude cover art bearing the provocative acronym F.U. which, rather than referring to the album's title, seems to be a less-than-friendly farewell to his old bandmates. The production is, as one might expect given the short timeframe, rough and careless. However, despite a few lapses into lightweight easy-listening experiments, the album contains some surprisingly good songs, even if it ultimately settles for the level of a decent, workmanlike record. If nothing else, it continues, with greater conviction, the style the band had been developing in recent years, proof that the direction the band had taken in recent years was largely steered by Geoff himself.

The rest of the band doesn't just sit back and watch: having hired vocalist Todd La Torre, a powerful and vigorous voice poached from Crimson Glory (and unsettlingly similar to the Geoff Tate of "The Warning" era), they get to work in parallel on a new album, released a month after their "enemy's".

The name given to the album says it all: Queensrÿche, and nothing else, reaffirming the band's much-touted intention to start over from scratch and return to the sound abandoned some 20 long years ago due to alleged oppression. The fear of finding oneself facing a sorry cover band of themselves, recreating their former glory days, would be vivid and justifiable for anyone. That fear would indeed seem well-founded listening to the single "Redemption", released ahead of the album, so full of self-referential callbacks, while the album's intro, "X2", is a thinly veiled homage to the delirious atmospheres of "Rage For Order".

However, what lies behind the facade is an album that's anything but self-satisfied. The band's energy seems, at times, to flow powerfully once again: Rockenfield hadn't pounded the skins with such vigor in ages, reviving the historic rhythmic pairing with bassist Jackson on the powerful "Spore". Overall, the song structures are decidedly more linear and immediate compared both to the band's most recent work and to Tate's "rival" album. What's missing are the complex compositions, those excursions straddling pop and the band's progressive streak, which, despite their ups and downs in quality, had nonetheless remained present even in the works following De Garmo's departure — one of the chief songwriters of the Seattle quintet's "belle époque". Here, the scales are tipped heavily toward epic heavy metal, at times a touch bombastic, with a return to impactful, hook-driven melodies.

The formula doesn't always hit the mark, though: "Vindication" impresses with its speed and "In This Light" flirts with its catchy melody, but both tend to wear thin after a few listens, exposing some rather thin songwriting underneath. In other cases the balance is spot on, and so it happens that "Don't Look Back" recaptures the frenzy of landmark moments from "Operation: Mindcrime", with "The Needle Lies" standing out as the most obvious parallel.

There's certainly no shortage of ballads. "A Word Without" is the classic "made in Queensrÿche" big ballad, containing all the elements of the band's traditional formula: orchestration, a duet with inseparable muse Pamela Moore, and a solo drenched in delay. It's light years away from "Silent Lucidity", but it's nice to think back to that song even for a moment, while "Open Road" closes out the platter with class, restoring another old Ryche feature: the big finale.

After so many months of tasteless gossip, it's inevitable to at least draw a comparison with the "mirror-image" work led by arch-rival Geoff Tate. "Queensrÿche" is solid, with a good average level throughout, without the missteps of "Frequency Unknown" (even leaving aside the sacrilegious covers Tate insisted on); yet it perhaps lacks that stroke of class, that one great track that stands out and lodges itself in memory - a quality the controversial ex-vocalist of the band manages to deliver at times (see the closing "The Weight Of The World"), much to the chagrin of nostalgics everywhere.

In conclusion, this new-old Queensrÿche convinces and surprises with its rediscovered enthusiasm, delivering a solid, well-played record. Has the phoenix risen from its ashes? Not yet, but the path is set: with greater integration from the excellent La Torre, who will need to gradually shed his occasional mimicry of his predecessor, and with the evolution of songwriting that's understandably still a bit too self-satisfied, this could eventually give back the band that so many fell in love with in the '80s, after a long, very long wait.

In April 2014 an agreement is reached between the parties: Rockenfield and co. acquire the rights to use the band's name, while Tate gets exclusive rights to the complete "Operation: Mindcrime" work and its sequel. However the band's career and the former frontman's new solo path play out, it's at least comforting that the sad battle between members of a band that marked metal history has finally come to an end.

2015 then brings the second album from the lineup with Todd La Torre, the first since the end of the legal dispute. "Condition Human" raises hopes with two outstanding singles - the epic charge of "Guardian" and the majestic nod to the Mindcrime era delivered by "Hellfire" - but the rest of the record settles into merely acceptable territory, far less thrilling, offering a collection of catchy tracks free of glaring flaws, but also lacking those sparks that separate a modest, by-the-numbers record from a work that brings something truly meaningful to such an important phase of a band's career.

The follow-up, The Verdict, leaves very similar impressions, produced without another founding member of the band: the absence of Scott Rockenfield, after he announced a break from Queensryche in 2017 for family reasons, now seems to be permanent. In his place, the ever-reliable Todd La Torre doubles up on drums with results that are, all things considered, commendable. The album itself confirms the band's trend, namely a desire to move away from certain cerebral digressions of the recent past, pushing even further toward a leaner, no-frills heavy metal. Ten tracks in 45 minutes express well the conciseness of the new compositions, which flow smoothly one into the next, amid some excesses (like La Torre's now chronic mirroring of old Tate's style) and a few moments that recall flashes of the glorious past, especially in Wilton's blazing phrasing ("Inside Out" above all).

Today's Queensryche is a band that enters the studio with good intentions and commitment, but the impression - from 2013 to now - that they've settled into a reassuring, harmless, self-satisfied revival, however dignified, remains hard to shake off.

Contributions by Vincenzo Dente ("Mindcrime At The Moore", "Sign of the Times: The Best of Queensrÿche", "Take Cover", "American Soldier", Dedicated to Chaos") and Michele Bordi (from "Queensrÿche" in 2013 to today)

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