When it comes to Geoff Tate, I admit that I’ve been a hater for a while, but Sweet Oblivion’s new self-titled release is not bad at all.
It’s an interesting project in that it seems the band had the music written, and Frontiers Records put them in touch with Tate. Apparently there was very little collaboration, which doesn’t seem to be the setup for a good record, but Sweet Oblivion defies the odds.
There’s definitely a classic Queensryche vibe to the music on this album, though if guitarist Simone Mularoni is to be believed, that may not be due to Tate. In an interview with Aardschok Magazine, he says that when he submitted the material to Tate, it came back with a closer resemblance to hip-hop than Queensryche. After a few rounds of disagreements between guitarist, singer and label, Mularoni says Tate recorded the vocals on his tour bus and sent them back. I’m guessing from this interview, we won’t see a tour for this project.
This past year was a strange one for me musically. While there were a few albums that I’d consider outstanding, I had a very hard time finding new music that connected with me. Some highly anticipated records disappointed me, and an album for which I really had no expectations stunned me and rose to the top of my Best of 2015 list.
Rather than culling from a big list as usual, I had to stretch a little to get it to 10 entries, and the bands on the list are all pretty well-established acts. It’s certainly not the strongest top 10 that I’ve ever turned in, but those few records at the top would be there in any year.
Here’s hoping for a more fruitful musical search in 2016 …
10. PRO-PAIN – THE VOICE OF REBELLION: This is the first of a few surprises on the Best of 2015 list for me. Though the veteran hardcore band has been popping out albums every year or two since their 1992 debut Foul Taste of Freedom, I haven’t really given them much thought since that record. I liked the debut but, as with most hardcore, the sound got old to me after a while. I gave this one a listen with somewhat fresh ears, and songs like the raging title track and the catchy “Age of Disgust” pulled me in.
Condition Human marks the full return of the Queensryche that I know and love.
While I really enjoyed the band’s eponymous debut with new singer Todd LaTorre, I thought, in places, the dynamic hadn’t quite come together. That’s not the case with the band’s second record with LaTorre. It hits right in Queensryche’s late ‘80s/early ‘90s progressive metal powerhouse, yet manages to not sound dated.
I had my doubts. The first song that I heard was album opener “Arrow of Time,” and while it’s not a bad song, it’s not a standout either. But then along comes “Guardian,” and all is right with the world. An aggressively catchy guitar riff, combined with some driving beats from drummer Scott Rockenfield, puts the listener in mind of some of the band’s more aggressive early work. The huge chorus, though, is firmly rooted in the Mindcrime era, which Queensryche backs up with a lyrical nod to that album. For me, it’s easily one of the best hooks of the record — and with Todd LaTorre wailing like a young, in-his-prime Geoff Tate, it’s a thing of beauty.
There seems to be a theme about ones and onlys going on in this week's shuffle. Oh, and check out the nifty new logo so that when this feeds to Facebook, you guys won't have to look at my ugly mug plastered across the page ... at least, I hope.
"Burning Times,” Iced Earth. From the album Something Wicked This Way Comes (1998). If I had to pick one Iced Earth song, this would probably be the one. The riff is awesome, the tune is full of power, and it’s a great way to kick off the best album of the Matt Barlow era.
The "triumphant" return of the Saturday Shuffle? A nice mix of heavy and hick anyway ...
"Hand of Doom," Black Sabbath. From the album Paranoid (1970). This dark song about drug use is one of the oft-overlooked gems from Black Sabbath's most famous album. Geezer Butler delivers a mesmerizing bass line that's just perfect for the tone and subject matter of the song.
After a few weeks of wildly varied shuffles, we're back to something a little more metal, minus one country tune, of course ...
Bruce Dickinson, "Kill Devil Hill." From the album A Tyranny of Souls (2005). Man, we're long overdue for a new Bruce Dickinson solo album. His solo work, at least for me, has been far better than Iron Maiden's records in recent years. My shuffle seems to love this song, which naturally, deals with the Wright Brothers' first flight. It's one of those great, dramatic Dickinson tunes.
I'll start my look at the best hard rock and metal albums of the year with a few that didn't quite make the cut, some random thoughts, and a look ahead at 2014.
Honorable Mentions
Philip H. Anselmo and the Illegals -- Walk Through Exits Only. Though this record narrowly missed my top 10, it's certainly the most interesting I heard this year. Dubbed by Anselmo as anti-music, the album is loaded with hooks while, at the same time, being very chaotic and jarring.
Round Two of the Queensryche wars arrives with the eponymous new release from the Todd La Torre-fronted version. As expected, this lineup dips back into the history of the band, pulling out the more metallic and progressive sounds of the 1980s.
On first listen, Queensryche struck me as on OK album with a couple of standout tracks, but I have to admit that, the more I listen to it, the more the songs began to creep up and grow on me. A perfect example is the first real song on the record, “Where Dreams Go to Die.” I really liked the opening of it on first listen, and the big guitar riff from Michael Wilton leading into the verse is great, but I wasn’t crazy about the slower verse and bridge of the song. About three listens in, though, I had to admit that the song had me. It’s not quite what I expected, but there’s enough of that early Queensryche sound there to draw me in.
It’s been a really solid year for hard rock and metal so far. At six months, I’m often adding mediocre albums that I know won’t make the final list to get to 10. This year, I actually had to make a tough call or two. Maybe I should have gone to 13, but with two 13s on the list already, that might get confusing …
No. 10: GLORYHAMMER – TALES FROM THE KINGDOM OF FIFE: Christopher Bowes, the man who brought us Scottish Pirate Metal with Alestorm, now brings us Scottish Epic Fantasy Metal. Tales from the Kingdom of Fife pokes a little bit of tongue-in-cheek fun at the formulas of power metal, but also shows a great respect for the music. It’s a little cheesy, a lot of fun and better than a great deal of the “serious” power metal out there. If for nothing else, this album gets a nod because “Angus McFife” is the most fun I’ve had singing along to a song with my son all year.
It will come as no surprise to many Queensryche fans that the weakest link in Geoff Tate’s version of the band may be Tate himself.
To be fair, Frequency Unknown is actually a much better record than I expected from Tate-sryche, and if it had been a Geoff Tate solo record instead of something masquerading as Queensryche, I probably would have been more open to it. It’s certainly far better than Tate’s recent Kings and Thieves.
But it’s not Queensryche, and it’s not really a band. It’s more of a Tate solo project with a whole bunch of guest musicians.
Damn, this album is fantastic. I always seem to forget just how good it is when I go a little while without listening to it. Then, every now and then, usually when a disappointing new Queensryche record — or in this case, a Geoff Tate solo album — hits the shelves, I find myself reaching for it again. Each time, I’m amazed all over by how great it is and how well it holds up nearly a quarter century later.
I’m sitting at my desk on a Saturday night working when I pop the CD into my computer and put the headphones in. The opening of the concept comes on with the nurse coming in to check on the psychiatric patient, that deep “I remember now” after she leaves as he begins to recall events and the slowly building instrumental piece “Anarchy-X” that eventually explodes, after a brief lull, into the soaring “Revolution Calling.” By the time we hit the first chorus, I’m alternately playing air drums and guitar and bobbing and banging my head to the music. I’m getting strange looks across the room, but I don’t care. You have to enjoy this record properly.
I have hope now that I might one day hear a good Queensryche album again. The latest solo outing from former frontman Geoff Tate makes it pretty clear who has been in control of the band’s creative direction recently.
If you’re looking for a sequel to the band’s awful 2011 album Dedicated to Chaos, this is your record. It’s got limp rockers, it’s got banal ballads pretending to be more than they are, it’s got an arrogant air of self-importance, it’s got saxophone, it’s got Tate rapping. In short, it’s an absolute mess — worse than I even imagined that it would be.
If I went back for my whole life, 2006 would probably be the only year that a country album would lead my best-of list. For 2006, though, my top two records are country.
If I had to pick the best record for the first decade of this century, it would be tough to not pick Hank III’s Straight to Hell for its impact on me, personally, and on the underground country scene in general.
While Johnny Cash’s American Recordings in 1994 was the album that reintroduced me to country music and opened me up to listening to some of the classic artists of the genre, it was Straight to Hell that led directly to my discovery of artists who are playing a more traditional form of country today.
The concept album, over the years, has become a staple of the metal genre. Though there are claims to the origin of the concept album stretching back to the 1930s (or I suppose you could argue that operas were the first concept albums), the form probably reached the public consciousness in the 1960s with bands like The Beatles and The Who. In the 1970s, the concept album became the provenance of prog rock. The hard rock and metal bands of the late 1970s and the 1980s soon jumped on board, and since then, just about every metal band that wanted to seem “epic” has given it a shot, and many of them have been dreadful. It’s a tricky proposition, the balance between story and music, the thin line between the almost necessary bombast of a concept album and pretentious self-indulgement. Proven, and even legendary bands (*cough,cough*Judas Priest*coughcough*), have failed in the attempt.
I'm really torn when it comes to this record. On the one hand, I want to like it because it's an ambitious project, and perhaps one of the most important concepts that Queensryche has attempted. On the other, I've had trouble really getting into anything that Queensryche has done since "Empire," way back in 1990.
After putting out three classic records in a row with "Rage for Order," "Operation: Mindcrime" and "Empire,' the band began to explore some different sounds and, along the way, lost its focus. The result over the past nearly 20 years has been a mish-mash of styles and a general lack of the spark that fired the band on those three records.
Now we have "American Soldier," a concept record inspired by singer Geoff Tate's father's experiences in Korea and based around the life of soldiers from World War II to the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. In writing the record, Tate interviewed a number of soldiers to get the feel of life as a soldier. Many of these interviews have made their way onto the record in the form of sound bites. Some songs, like second track "Unafraid," are little more than a series of comments from soldiers set to music. Actually, these moments are some of the better pieces of "American Soldier." The soldiers, certainly, can tell their own story better than the band.
The record starts with boot camp on the song "Sliver," which is a little darker and more modern than the rest of the record, with an almost rapped delivery in places. The first real taste of Queensryche comes in the third track, "Hundred Mile Stare," a droning, melancholy ballad-ish tune that's not bad, but really has nothing to recommend it either. The same could be said of the next tune, "At 30,000 Feet." On those two tracks, it seems that the band is going for a gut-punch on the listener, but like much of Queensryche's later work, the songs really lack the intensity and connection to produce that reaction.
Things begin to pick up a little with "A Dead Man's Words," another dark song that gives me a little more of the progressive elements and layers that I want from Queensryche. It's the beginning of an uptick in the middle of the record. Next track, "The Killer," offers the most memorable hook on the record, and "Middle of Hell" is one of the more interesting musical pieces on the record. First single, "If I Were King" opens with a haunting and harrowing story from the front lines that delivers the gut-punch that the band hasn't been able to do musically and raises the stock of a song that's really not that interesting otherwise.
"Man Down!" will likely be a favorite of fans of Queensryche's older, heavier style. It's one of the most aggressive tracks here, and it's not bad. Tate brings his daughter in for a vocal appearance on "Home Again," which despite being one of the poppiest tunes on the record is one of the few that makes an actual emotional connection.
"American Soldier" is not a bad record and certainly worth a listen for subject matter alone. It's well-written and well-played, though many of the songs are very similar and tend to blur together. Ultimately, I wish that the music could create the same kind of emotion and connection that the recorded stories from the soldiers do. That would have made it a great record.
