Hey, slight bump but I've recently gone through the Queensryche discography & I decided to look through this thread to see some discussion about the material I've heard. It's interesting to see, but the one thing that's puzzling me is where the idea that "Queensryche sucked after Promised Land" comes from (mostly at the beginning of the thread). I personally enjoyed Q2K & Tribe & I absolutely adore OM2. I get that they've released a lot of bad albums (DTC especially is the worst thing ever 
), I don't see why this idea that they were consistently terrible until the 2012 split comes from. What issues do you guys have with Q2K/Tribe/OM2 that makes you put them on the same level as HITNF/AS/DTC?
We talked about this A LOT in the Queensryche discography thread, so you might want to check that out. A lot of good discussion of each album there. As far as the albums you mentioned, here's my short take:
First off, HITNF is a great album, and I'll fight anybody who says otherwise.
It has some moments. Liquid Sky is a good song. Falling Down isn't bad. Same with Breakdown. And Burning Man, despite being "different" is kind of infectious too. But I struggle to find much more that is truly "interesting" about the album. And that is a problem for a band that had been known up to that point for standing out and being deep, interesting, and thought-provoking. The album is "just kind of there." If this was some band other than Queensryche, I doubt I would have even bought the album. I don't hate it. But I don't find much of anything that makes me want to listen to it either. That said, I agree with the general point about wanting to maybe hear more in that vein from them. This was their first time writing without their primary guy, CDG, and it showed that something was missing. Having done an album and two tours with Kelly, I think they could have definitely written something more inspired that sounded more like a true band effort if he had been able to stay on.
Tribe: Very good HALF of an album. Open, Desert Dance, and Art of Life are very solid. If the entire album was that good, this would be a pretty special album. But it isn't. It does have a cohesive dark vibe, which is a good thing. But despite a couple of other pretty good supporting songs in Tribe and Doing Fine, the rest of the album is pretty unmemorable and sounds like it could have just be slapped together from leftovers from outside writers who hadn't been able to sell them to anybody else. It's not a "bad" album. But the quality is very inconsistent to me between the awesome trilogy of songs, a couple of good ones, and the unforgettable rest (well, I wish Blood was "unforgettable"--but it's so bad I can't forget it no matter how hard I try).
Mindcrime2: This sums it up pretty well for me:
OM2 suffers from mediocrity, apart from a few good songs, and is too long so that it drags in the end. And I think the story is shit and doesn't do the first one justice.
And apart from the quality of the songs you really can tell that Tate doesn't give a shit about his vocals anymore, in the end he doesn't even try to put in a decent performance.
It has some great moments. The first half of the album is mostly really good. But it takes a nosedive. Dio's potential is wasted on a really dumb song and overly campy performance. And the cracks in Tate's vocal delivery are REALLY starting to show.
By American Soldier, Slater had mostly really figured out the Queensryche sound and how to coax that out of the players. But between Tate's lackluster vocals and the growing fissures in the band, what could have been a great album is just a very good but flawed album. And, of course, they were completely off the rails after that. I wouldn't say that they are a band that "completely sucked after Promised Land." But they are a band that lost their primary songwriter, lost their cohesiveness, and, consequently, lost their way. And I think you can hear that in the music. Listening to the albums tells a story. Some of what they did along that journey worked. A lot did not. Either way, that's okay. Other than DTC, there really isn't an album where they haven't given me
something to like, so I won't complain--much.
Topic: Official Queensryche thread: Kickstart the next album (Read 691746 times)
