The one thing that upsets me about Queensryche live is they don't play Empire in full.
The full record? They have never done a show where they've done that (even with the original lineup), but in 2009 on the American Soldier tour, they played three suites - Rage for Order, American Soldier, and Empire. Each suite had six or seven songs from each record, and were rotated. For Empire, I'm pretty sure they did all the songs (not at the same show, but overall).
I remember suggesting that 2015 would have been the perfect year to show case Empire on the 25th anniversary of the record. According to setlist.fm, they played 78 shows in 2015. Some of those were opening up for the Scorpions, and of course, festival dates, but there were a ton of their usual fly-in headline dates at casinos and such. The opportunity was there to play Empire in its entirety, and probably generate a lot of interest in seeing the album in full. Most bands electing to do that have seen really nice success (Dream Theater this year for Images and Words, Fates Warning with Parallels, etc.)
But Queensryche elected to play mostly a greatest hits set in 2015. In my opinion, that was probably because they didn't want to invest time in preparing any sort of Empire-based setlist, as that would require a lot of rehearsal and overall time...and they were busy writing and recording Condition Human.
Queensryche sits on a very weird fence. On one hand, they have absolutely embraced nostalgia out of the necessity of making money. They play casinos, fly-in dates for hair metal festivals, etc. Those are all good pay days, and they rely strongly on their back catalog, as opposed to the new material with Todd. On the other hand, they are still continuing to make new music, and try to pepper their setlist with a few songs from it as they go. They also balance out all the hair metal gigs and fly-in dates by doing solid headline runs and some metal festivals.
Simply put, it is an...interesting position they are in. You would think that given their status as both a progressive hard rock band, and their popularity with the hair/pop metal crowd, they'd be in a great spot. And in some ways it is. But I also think they've sort of dropped the ball a bit, not taking advantage of certain things (such as Empire's anniversary, and not properly featuring the two records with Todd in the setlist).
Take 2016. 30th Anniversary of Rage for Order. Truth be told, not a record well known by the mainstream, nor would it generate a lot of huge interest from the promoters. So, they elected not to acknowledge it, other than at some shows saying how it was 30 years since Rage's release, and then playing a couple songs.
But I'd argue this -- on the two headline legs they did in 2016 for Condition Human, how hard would it have been to play for 1 hour, 45 minutes (105 minutes, as opposed to the 85 they typically do these days as a headliner), do all of Rage for Order (50 minutes), then play three songs from self-titled (15 minutes), five songs from Condition Human (25 minutes), and then an encore of Queen of the Reich, Empire, and Take Hold of the Flame.
That...shouldn't have been hard. And it would have both given fans Rage in its entirety, a big chunk of modern QR (seven songs), and an encore of metal hits.
But nope...
I don't really get it, and don't get why they wouldn't see the value in both building good will with the fan base by doing something like that, and staying extremely relevant by featuring a bigger chunk of their most recent material. I know I'm not the only one who thinks they continually shoot themselves in the foot a bit by not doing stuff like that. But hell, I guess it is easier to just pick a setlist, learn it, and then not having to bother really rehearsing, and just do fly-in gigs. It is really a shame. But many fans don't seem to care, so I'm likely in the minority.
Topic: The Queensr˙che Discography Thread (Read 106840 times)
