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NEUE REGEL IS HERE: TRF's Queensryche appreciation thread


fraroc
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Seriously, this band was something else in the 1980s and I'm honestly glad I've rediscovered them in recent years. Often branded as "thinking man's heavy metal", many people viewed them and still view them as the American Iron Maiden, which in many respects is a valid comparison seeing as how not only is Maiden incredibly influental to the fearsome fivesome from Seattle, Bruce Dickinson himself admits that Operation: Mindcrime absolutley blew Seventh Son of A Seventh Son away in terms of musicianship. 

 

Their first two releases, Queensryche and The Warning both are straightforward heavy metal kick to the teeth with songs like Queen of The Reich, Nightrider, The Warning, Before The Storm, and of course the legendary Take Hold Of The Flame, but when Rage For Order came out, that was when they started attempting things that no other band in the heavy metal/hair metal scene was doing, writing complex, multi-layered, deep, and emotional music and experimenting with combining traditional metal with goth rock, synthpop, and darkwave. RFO is to me when Queensryche really went from being the American Iron Maiden to something truly unique. And everything I just described about RFO was cranked up to 11 with Mindcrime which is clearly the 2112 of the 80s. 

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3 Favorites for me are:

Promised Land

Operation LiveCrime

Rage For Order

 

American Soldier was the last one that I kind of enjoyed.  Take Cover was decent too I guess.  Kind of gave up after Mindcrime II

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13 minutes ago, 1-0-0-1-0-0-1 said:

 

Empire and Operation Mindcrime both. But outside of those two albums I haven't had much exposure to this band.

Those two have albums have pretty much been enough for me as well, though I did listen to their debut when I was on high school.  They were from the area, Green River, I think.  I saw them open for someone at a live gig back then as well, when  Queen of the Reich was their hit.

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11 hours ago, fraroc said:

Seriously, this band was something else in the 1980s and I'm honestly glad I've rediscovered them in recent years. Often branded as "thinking man's heavy metal", many people viewed them and still view them as the American Iron Maiden, which in many respects is a valid comparison seeing as how not only is Maiden incredibly influental to the fearsome fivesome from Seattle, Bruce Dickinson himself admits that Operation: Mindcrime absolutley blew Seventh Son of A Seventh Son away in terms of musicianship. 

 

Their first two releases, Queensryche and The Warning both are straightforward heavy metal kick to the teeth with songs like Queen of The Reich, Nightrider, The Warning, Before The Storm, and of course the legendary Take Hold Of The Flame, but when Rage For Order came out, that was when they started attempting things that no other band in the heavy metal/hair metal scene was doing, writing complex, multi-layered, deep, and emotional music and experimenting with combining traditional metal with goth rock, synthpop, and darkwave. RFO is to me when Queensryche really went from being the American Iron Maiden to something truly unique. And everything I just described about RFO was cranked up to 11 with Mindcrime which is clearly the 2112 of the 80s. 

I enjoyed reading this! Especially as my exposure to them has been mostly limited to Empire and Mindcrime, now I know what album to shoot for next!

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There run of albums up to and including Promised Land is God Tier.

 

Discovered them this year, and I think they are f***ing incredible. Some of the more recent stuff is brilliant too.

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And I should add that I think it's an absolute crime that the only time you hear Queensryche on the radio is when rock stations do some kind of "hairspray special" which really just translates to all 80s metal that's not Def Leppard, Whitesnake, or Bon Jovi.
In fact, I challenge all these radio stations to put Unskinny Bop up against Eyes of A Stranger or Nothin But a Good Time up against Walk In The Shadows and tell me how Poison and Queensryche are anywhere near the same genre of music. 

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4 hours ago, Segue Myles said:

There run of albums up to and including Promised Land is God Tier.

 

Discovered them this year, and I think they are f***ing incredible. Some of the more recent stuff is brilliant too.


I hate to say it, but it does seem like Chris DeGarmo was the glue that held QR together, whithout him they've been having nothing but problems between Mindcrime II (which was pretty much their version of Yes' Union with the songwriting difficulties, band infighting, and session musicians), Geoff Tate becoming completely unhinged and assaulting Scott Rockenfield which led to the big Queensryche schism of 2012, to Scott Rockenfield dissapearing and now suing the band claiming that Eddie Jackson and Michael Wilton fired him while they claim that Scott quit on his own accord.

And its a shame because Todd LaTorre is a great singer and songwriter and the two latest QR albums almost sound like a modernized version of The Warning. 

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21 minutes ago, fraroc said:


I hate to say it, but it does seem like Chris DeGarmo was the glue that held QR together, whithout him they've been having nothing but problems between Mindcrime II (which was pretty much their version of Yes' Union with the songwriting difficulties, band infighting, and session musicians), Geoff Tate becoming completely unhinged and assaulting Scott Rockenfield which led to the big Queensryche schism of 2012, to Scott Rockenfield dissapearing and now suing the band claiming that Eddie Jackson and Michael Wilton fired him while they claim that Scott quit on his own accord.

And its a shame because Todd LaTorre is a great singer and songwriter and the two latest QR albums almost sound like a modernized version of The Warning. 

 

Don't hate to say that. It's a fact that when DeGarmo left, the band lost it's soul. Long time fans have been saying it for years. DeGarmo was the main creative force and he is a huge reason they had such an impeccable run from the debut EP through Promised Land. The band really didn't have much direction or focus after he left. It seemed like the band was to either continue to go down the shitter creatively or break up. DeGarmo held that band together and kept them on track. Without him they didn't know what to do and every choice they made seemed to sink them further and further down. La Torre has been good for them. They seem to have gotten some respect back and cleaned up the Queensryche name a bit with him. The stuff they're doing with La Torre isn't bad. It's solid old school style metal but at the same time it's not anything that gets me to want to go back and listen to it again.

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11 minutes ago, J2112YYZ said:

 

Don't hate to say that. It's a fact that when DeGarmo left, the band lost it's soul. Long time fans have been saying it for years. DeGarmo was the main creative force and he is a huge reason they had such an impeccable run from the debut EP through Promised Land. The band really didn't have much direction or focus after he left. It seemed like the band was to either continue to go down the shitter creatively or break up. DeGarmo held that band together and kept them on track. Without him they didn't know what to do and every choice they made seemed to sink them further and further down. La Torre has been good for them. They seem to have gotten some respect back and cleaned up the Queensryche name a bit with him. The stuff they're doing with La Torre isn't bad. It's solid old school style metal but at the same time it's not anything that gets me to want to go back and listen to it again.

Correct on all fronts. I like the new stuff, but I hear it and think "ooh let's play something better instead!"

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They got their start in Bellevue, IIRC. I had a friend in high school who bought a 4-song cassette and left in in continuous loop for about a month. Saw them in concert a few times. My top albums are Empire and Promised Land. I even like the somewhat stripped down approach of Hear In The Now Frontier. Seeing Mindcrime played in it's  entirety live is pretty awesome.  I think it's  cool as hell that Queen Of The Reich was used in the GTA Vice City Stories soundtrack.

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On 6/19/2022 at 11:44 AM, J2112YYZ said:

 

Don't hate to say that. It's a fact that when DeGarmo left, the band lost it's soul. Long time fans have been saying it for years. DeGarmo was the main creative force and he is a huge reason they had such an impeccable run from the debut EP through Promised Land. The band really didn't have much direction or focus after he left. It seemed like the band was to either continue to go down the shitter creatively or break up. DeGarmo held that band together and kept them on track. Without him they didn't know what to do and every choice they made seemed to sink them further and further down. La Torre has been good for them. They seem to have gotten some respect back and cleaned up the Queensryche name a bit with him. The stuff they're doing with La Torre isn't bad. It's solid old school style metal but at the same time it's not anything that gets me to want to go back and listen to it again.

Theres always rumors cropping up every so often about Geoff rejoining Queensryche but I'm of the volition that the only way that a Geoff reunion could work is if Chris DeGarmo returns to the band. He's really the only one who can wrangle the big egos of Geoff Tate, Mike and Eddie and really force them to get along.

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1 hour ago, fraroc said:

Theres always rumors cropping up every so often about Geoff rejoining Queensryche but I'm of the volition that the only way that a Geoff reunion could work is if Chris DeGarmo returns to the band. He's really the only one who can wrangle the big egos of Geoff Tate, Mike and Eddie and really force them to get along.

 

It's too late for any of that. DeGarmo hasn't come back to music since he left the band. The only thing he did was record some stuff with his daughter. He's completely done with the music business. He's too old to come back and try to settle the animosity between everyone. Those are issues he was not part of. So, there's no reason for him to come back to try and fix things.

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On 6/18/2022 at 2:33 PM, goose said:

Empire is a perfect album


First album. Just like Rush's , all that promise of great things to come.


Then, there's Mindcrime.  Which is my opinion is a concept album in the same league as Quadrophenia, The Wall, and Scenes From a Memory.

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8 minutes ago, grep said:


First album. Just like Rush's , all that promise of great things to come.


Then, there's Mindcrime.  Which is my opinion is a concept album in the same league as Quadrophenia, The Wall, and Scenes From a Memory.

In your opinion? Here’s a question, who *wouldn’t* put Mindcrime in the same league as those albums?

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2 hours ago, Entre_Perpetuo said:

In your opinion? Here’s a question, who *wouldn’t* put Mindcrime in the same league as those albums?

In my opinion, the best of the big league concept albums. Ever.

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27 minutes ago, Segue Myles said:

In my opinion, the best of the big league concept albums. Ever.

 

Mindcrime and Scenes are very close with me but I give the edge to Mindcrime because the story is told better and more clearly. I also think the album flows better. The emotion is much stronger in Mindcrime too.

 

And when it was time for the female part, Queensryche actually got a lady to sing it instead of Tate doing a more high pitched voice 😆

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26 minutes ago, J2112YYZ said:

 

Mindcrime and Scenes are very close with me but I give the edge to Mindcrime because the story is told better and more clearly. I also think the album flows better. The emotion is much stronger in Mindcrime too.

 

And when it was time for the female part, Queensryche actually got a lady to sing it instead of Tate doing a more high pitched voice 😆

First few listens of Mindcrime, never noticed the female vocals 😂😂😂

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On 6/19/2022 at 12:39 AM, 1-0-0-1-0-0-1 said:

 

Empire and Operation Mindcrime both. But outside of those two albums I haven't had much exposure to this band.

73, I feel you really need to check out 

‘ Rage for Order ‘ .. when it first came out in ‘86 it really was an amazing quantum leap forward

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17 minutes ago, Segue Myles said:

First few listens of Mindcrime, never noticed the female vocals 😂😂😂

Yep I am lucky & old enough LOL to see them live in 1990 at the Aston Villa Leisure Centre in Birmingham , Central England and I can’t remember her name but they had a woman onstage with them who sang all the appropriate parts.

I do remember that she played the part well and went down well with the crowd.

I also remember George Lynch’s Lynch Mob were the support act and George’s amp kept cutting out and he was really 🤬about it with his roadie/guitar tech !

( Edited for ‘ spell checker ‘ induced typos ! ) 

 

Edited by Alex’s Amazing Arpeggios
Spellchecker typos !
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It was Pamela Moore I saw with Queensrŷche on their 1990 UK Empire tour.

I can’t remember if they played Operation Mindcrime in its entirety but they certainly played at least most of it 😎


 

Pamela Moore is an American singer-songwriter, mixing hard rock, heavy metal, melodic rock and industrial musicwhile her earlier years delved into pop and electronica. She currently resides in Seattle, Washington.

Pamela Moore
Moore in 2013
Moore in 2013

 

QueensrÿcheEdit

Moore has performed with Queensrÿche on several occasions, most notably on the song "Suite Sister Mary" on Queensrÿche's 1988 concept album Operation: Mindcrime. Following the album's commercial success, she started performing live with Queensrÿche, making her first public appearance with them on the 1990–1991 Empire tour, participating in the filming and recording of Operation: Livecrime, and later also on 2002's Live Evolution and 2006's Mindcrime at the Moore. In the studio, Moore revived her role as Sister Mary on the sequel album Operation: Mindcrime II, which was released in 2006.[1][2]

Moore has also performed with the version of Queensrÿche fronted by Todd La Torre in 2012, and in 2013, she provided vocals on the song "A World Without" on their self-titled album Queensrÿche.[7] At that album's release party, she performed "Suite Sister Mary", "Eyes of a Stranger", and "Silent Lucidity" with them.[8]

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3 hours ago, Segue Myles said:

In my opinion, the best of the big league concept albums. Ever.

Now there’s a more debatable take! Totally understandable, but personally, it would be Quadrophenia for me. Maybe Scenes.

 

oh, or The Lamb if it’s in the running

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6 hours ago, grep said:

Theresa Thomason has entered the chat.
 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theresa_Thomason

 

That's not what I was talking about though. I'm talking about the main female parts in the story of the album. Now, Queensryche did have the advantage of only needing to bring in Pamela Moore for the one song. Dream Theater had multiple parts sung from the perspective of Victoria. So, it was probably easier to get LaBrie to do it all than try and find someone else and pay them. I don't have a problem with that at all. I just think having a woman sing the part of Sister Mary really added a lot to the album. It gave it an extra layer and humanized the character rather than just having the storyteller tell us about her.

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