"People don't change; you just find out more about them."
- Harry. S. Truman
Queensryche, as a band, evolves constantly. Instead of releasing albums,
they are releasing milestones. They put out what they want, when they want
it, with little thought of the Billboard Charts or Grammy awards. Musically
speaking, they are the kid at the back of the class - quiet, secretly
intelligent, and with the uncanny ability of making themselves invisible in
a crowd. Queensryche's only bonafide "hit" exemplified this. The video for
"Silent Lucidity" (EMPIRE, 1990) showed them as vague images through a
guazy filter of bluish haze. There was no grandstanding, no hamming for the
camera, no freak show. What the viewer saw was simply a culmination of the
imagery representing the song, as presented by the men who performed it.
That same video, despite its subtlety, was once on a 44-times-a-week
rotation with MTV, back when the channel actually showed videos. Back when
Queensryche made off with the 1991 Viewer's Choice Award. Music journalists
proclaimed that Queensryche had found their "formula" for success, and
would flourish in progressive-metal obscurity no longer. This only left
them confused when Queensryche turned around and released PROMISED
LAND (1994), an album resonant with despair, self-doubt, and anger. Some
claimed that PROMISED LAND was Queensryche's bid for the angst-ridden music
market where grunge once stood. Others said it was Queensryche's way of saying
that EMPIRE had come and gone. It was neither. PROMISED LAND was a
catharsis, representing the collective mood of the band. It was the lonely
sound of a man's heart breaking. Listen to the title track and "Someone
Else?" and you can hear it.
With the most recent release, last year's HEAR IN THE NOW FRONTIER,
Queensryche peels back yet another layer of their musical psyche. HEAR is
closer in spirit to EMPIRE than PROMISED LAND without really sounding like
anything the band has done before. Somehow the band maintains their
trademark sound (called "aunch" by guitarist Michael Wilton) while they
endlessly betray it.
"Some People Fly" sounds the most like an EMPIRE track, using the beautiful
three-part harmonies that made that album a standout. This song, with
"Saved" (which boasts, possibly, the album's best solo),"You", and "Hero"
packs a 4-in-a-row punch that has transcended any other description but
"Queensryche". That "aunch" is what you're hearing. It's the sound of five
talented individuals losing themselves in the moment and letting us in on
it. It's the perfect, gradual meshing of one note into the next. At their
best, Queensryche doesn't sound at all like 5 individuals, but one musical
wave.
A song doesn't have to have that "aunch" to be great, however. My ear always
knows when Super-Vocalist Geoff Tate and Wilton have collaborated, and
"Reach" is it. Wilton's quick-fire riffing collides perfectly with Tate's
confident three-octave performance, which is more stealth-attack these days
than the vocal-assault it was in the RAGE FOR ORDER era (1986).
Age (and maybe a few cigarettes) has given Tate's vocals a certain edge he
didn't possess prior to PROMISED LAND, and a certain reliance on his lower
registers, used beautifully for "Hero". ("See the demons all around and/
Sometimes I feel/ Like one of them.") The whisper-intimate quaver adds
character, and loads the song with myriad undertones that Tate probably
didn't even intend.
I like guitarist Chris De Garmo's vocal turn here in "All I Want". His
voice has a charming 70s feel, like Paul McCartney (when he was a Beatle),
but more astonishingly echoing Todd Rundgren's "Hello It's Me." I'd like to
hear more from De Garmo, but not too much more, if you know what I mean. A
paranoid Tatenik like myself starts having delusions that De Garmo plans to
pull a Napoleon and overthrow Geoff Tate. In fact, I imagined Tate being
bound and gagged somewhere while the song was recorded, but that's just me.
In my opinion, the best track here is the final one. "spOOL" is pure Geoff,
a moment of complete bliss for those of us who can't get enough of the
man's singing and songwriting. Queensryche seems to have a history with the
thought-provoking, philosophy-heavy final track. From "Roads to Madness"
(THE WARNING, 1984) to "Eyes of a Stranger" (OPERATION:MINDCRIME, 1988)
they've proven time and again how adept they are at wrapping up a musical
concept and leaving the listener desperate for more, maybe closing with
some of Scott Rockenfield's minimalistically perfect drumming, or the
hollow echo of Eddie Jackson's bass, or the fading of one of De Garmo's
long, winding riffs. Always, the last track has ended a beat before I was
ready to say goodbye.
This album does have its weak places. Tate's anger is great vocalized, but
it deserves a more articulate vehicle than "Get a Life." I found that I
didn't get "into" the album until well after "Sign of the Times", which
sounds suspiciously like 'Ryche-by-Numbers. The introduction to
"Cuckoo's Nest" comes damn close to ruining a song that turns out to be
excellent work. My pet peeves here are listed together, and therefore easy
to program out of the line-up on my CD player: "Hit the Black" and "Anytime
Anywhere". The opening riffs of "Hit the Black" had me excited about what
lay in store until I discovered that someone had tread all over Tate's
distinctive voice with effects, which are supposed to sound cool, like the
distortion in "Dis Con Nec Ted" (PROMISED LAND), but only end up annoying me.
It's only the "un-effected" refrain of the song, with Tate singing "There's
no brakes on me...", that saves it. "Anytime Anywhere" is simply below
Queensryche's concern, and the fact that Tate penned the song bothers me
even more! (I mean, if Eddie wrote it...) Tate proved with "The Thin Line"
(EMPIRE) that a song didn't have to be so blatantly lascivious to make the
listener think dirty thoughts.
But I won't dwell on this band's negatives. Overall, HEAR IN THE NOW
FRONTIER is yet another good chapter in the Queensryche saga. (If you're
waiting for me to pit the albums or the band members' abilities against
each other, you're barking up the wrong site.) If Queensryche's next album
inspires me to say "and now for something completely different", I'll know
that they haven't changed a bit.