The Queensr˙che Discography Thread

[Phoenix87x]

I love OM II

Growing up, my household was way behind technologically and had only just gotten the internet around 2005, so my life basically was "go to store, buy album, and listen to album"

There was no going online like it is today where I know every single aspect of the behind the scenes story. So when OM II released, all I knew was that a band I loved was releasing a sequel to an album I loved. So I just listened to it for what it was and throughly enjoyed it.

It was years later that I found out that QR had nothing to do with writing the album and I wholesale just washed my hands of it on principle. I felt nauseous reading that the producer basically came up with the whole thing. I felt lied to and didn't listen to the album for a long long time.

Now a days, I've let all that go and just listen to and enjoy the album. Its super catchy and sticks in my mind for days on end after listening to it, just as it did back in 2006. I've grown to appreciate it too in the fact that every single QR album post Promised land and pre-Todd pretty much do nothing for me besides OM II, so I do treasure it in that way.

And honestly, It allows me not to burn out on OM I. Its gives me somewhere to go when I still have an appetite for OM, but don't want to over listen to part 1.

Do I still think its BS that it has the QR name without having QR imput? Absolutely yes, but whatever. QR is back on track with Todd, so fuck it.

And I utterly love All the promises.



TL:DR    I love OM II, despite the bullshit

[DragonAttack]

A golfing buddy lent me O:M2 a couple of days before we saw QR in Baltimore.  Gave it a couple of spins, and other than a couple tracks, it did absolutely nothing for me.  After seeing them at The Palace of Auburn Hills in 91, Wings Stadium in Kzoo in 94 to mostly sold out shows, Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids in 97, Pier Six Pavilion w/ Dream Theater in '03, they are now down to RamsHead, a club with a capacity of 1500.  My guess is there were 1000-1200 in attendance. 

Managed to work my way to about four rows from the stage for O:M1, and certainly enjoyed the 'show'.  But there was also a sadness in the whole setting as well.  Stood with my friend at the bar during the break before he went home, watched the first 10-15 minutes of the second set from about 30' away, and then went back to the bar and watched it on their TVs.  I do recall Tate on sax for 'Welcome To The Machine' as being such an odd choice as one of the encores.   

I gave the album one more chance a few days later.  And that was it.  Discovered I still had my copy a few weeks ago, stashed away in a TV stand in the basement.  Tried it again during this review, listening to the first half minute of some songs.  It went back into the box.

Such a cluster this turned out to be.  Really appreciate all the in depth and 'historic' commentary.  Also been following along with this website throughout the albums. 

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/Queensr%C3%BFche/Operation:_Mindcrime_II/105300/

Obvious differing of opinions.  At least I gave it a few more listens than the 'Thick as a Brick' sequel received from me.
[as a Queen fan, I'll comment on one other QR release, but I'll save that for later.  'Through the sorrow, all through our splendor......]

[Orbert]

I love OM II

Growing up, my household was way behind technologically and had only just gotten the internet around 2005, so my life basically was "go to store, buy album, and listen to album"

There was no going online like it is today where I know every single aspect of the behind the scenes story. So when OM II released, all I knew was that a band I loved was releasing a sequel to an album I loved. So I just listened to it for what it was and throughly enjoyed it.

It was years later that I found out that QR had nothing to do with writing the album and I wholesale just washed my hands of it on principle. I felt nauseous reading that the producer basically came up with the whole thing. I felt lied to and didn't listen to the album for a long long time.

Now a days, I've let all that go and just listen to and enjoy the album.

I think that's awesome.  Sometimes I feel like it's not necessarily a good thing that we know so much about how a album, or a song, or whatever, came about.  You listen to it, and you either like it or not, for the music and only the music.

I had a similar thing happen with the Yes album Union.  After the classic band (Howe guitar, Wakeman keyboards) had given way to the 90125 lineup (Rabin guitar, Kaye keyboards), the Union album was the amazing all-eight-of them band.  The concert was fantastic, and I expected nothing less from the album.

And I liked the album a lot.  Didn't love it, but it wasn't bad for an attempted return to form after over a decade.  Then I checked out the credits and liner notes, which revealed that there aren't actually any songs with all of them playing.  They are very clearly tracks from ABWH, and some from YesWest, plus a solo Howe acoustic piece.  Listening again, it was pretty obvious which was which.  But there's also a shit-ton of "additional musicians".  What's up with that?  It turns out that there were a lot of overdubs, so many that they actually lost track of things and to this day, no one knows exactly which tracks Howe and Wakeman even played on, because some of their original takes were cut in favor of studio overdubs by hired guns, and sometimes overdubbed again.  There has never before or since been a Yes album with so much material on it that they didn't write or play.

I couldn't listen to it any more.  It bugged me that I didn't even know who I was listening to on any given song.  Maybe ten years ago, I gave it another shot.  Yeah, some of the songs are still pretty good, and I don't care much that half the studio musicians in California on it; that's not why I don't listen to it.  I don't listen to it because they've got so many other albums that I just like better.

[Mladen]

I'll be generous and say Fear city slide is a great song. The Hands, Re-arrange you, I'm American and All the promises are also fairly solid.

The rest of the album didn't do a whole lot for me. The drama doesn't translate to me and I wasn't really pulled in by the dramatic, musical-ish instrumentals and guest vocals. It kind of goes on forever as well, the secon half truly loses me.

I decided I wouldn't mind about missing band members if the music itself did it for me - I would just give the tip of the hat to Tate and Jason. Unfortunately, even though I'm aware of all the hard work that went into this and dedication to making a true sounding Queensryche album, I didn't enjoy it too much. We'll see what American soldier has to offer once we get to it.

[Cyclopssss]

I'll echo most sentiments here that I liked the first half of the album when I bought it, but it ran out of steam fast after five or six songs in. The last song is the lowpoint imho.

[Samsara]

2007-2008 Tours and Take Cover

After the success of Operation: Mindcrime II, Queensryche was hellbent on staying out on the road and touring. The band's popularity enjoyed a nice rise due to the last album, and that meant bigger guarantees from promoters. The first most significant tour was a summer stint opening for Heaven and Hell and Alice Cooper. Queensryche performed a slate of hits and a cover of Pink Floyd's “Welcome to the Machine,” which was announced as the first single off of what would be Queensryche's first album of cover songs, titled Take Cover.

Before that release however, was a compilation album titled Sign of the Times: The Best of Queensryche. It was a career-defining retrospective that was put out in 2007. It came in multiple versions. A single CD, a digital release, and a deluxe edition that had demos from Geoff's band prior to Queensryche (MYTH) that had songs with similar titles to Queensryche classics, and a variety of rarities and alternate versions.

The most anticipated track was "Justified," which was written by Chris DeGarmo and included on the deluxe edition. This track (as mentioned earlier) was meant for Tribe, and in the liner notes, you can see the Tribe-era portion of the recording credits, along with the finishing credits of it (I believe it was mixed by Terry Date). The lyrics are an interesting story about a relationship with a person attempting to reconcile with someone. Many fans have speculated that the lyrics are DeGarmo’s public ode to unify Queensryche and settle the differences that drove Chris away from the band. But that speculation has never been confirmed by DeGarmo or the other members of Queensryche.

The digital version of the single CD has an alternate track list, which drops "All the Promises" and includes "You" (if my memory is working) from Hear in the Now Frontier. The artwork was, frankly, beautiful, and done by Hugh Syme. The booklet features many images Syme put together from lyric lines in various Queensryche songs.

Cover art:



Take Cover (2007)



Lead vocals - Geoff Tate
Guitars - Michael Wilton
Guitars - Mike Stone
Bass - Eddie Jackson
Drums - Scott Rockenfield

Released on Nov. 13, 2007, the 11-track Take Cover featured Queensryche's renditions of a number of progressive and hard rock artists, most notably the aforementioned Pink Floyd, Queen, Black Sabbath, Peter Gabriel, and U2, among others.

According to Jason Slater, who would once again helm the project, while a lot of the song choices were picked by the band, many of the arrangements were done by Slater. Unlike the previous record, Queensryche performs most of the material on the record, with some bits and pieces added by Slater and a session player by the name of Leo Larsen.

What was curious about Take Cover were the song choices. When the project was announced, fans guessed Queensryche would do a record full of its influences. While some were included (Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd),  the rest of the heavier acts that inspired Queensryche's creation were not a part of the project, most notably Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. Speaking to Slater as the project wrapped up, he indicated to me that Geoff and the band didn't want to cover songs from those they thought were the band's peers, so that's why they didn't cover them.

In what was probably the most eye brow-raising choice, Queensryche did a rendition of the opera song “Odissea,” originally performed by Carlo Marrale and Salvatore Licitra. The band also included a live version of “Bullet the Blue Sky” by U2, which was recorded in 1999.

Reception

Take Cover was generally viewed as what it was – a stop gap release until a new studio album could be recorded. Fan reaction to the arrangements and performances was mostly positive, although there were some complaints regarding the lack of metal acts (other than Sabbath) on the release. The vocals were also criticized a bit. When asked after the fact about the vocals not sounding as well done as Operation: Mindcrime II, Slater admitted that Tate opted to record them himself, at his house in just one or two takes per song. (in contrast to recording them with Slater at his studio.)

Musically, Queensryche played very well. Tony Iommi heard Michael Wilton's solo in “Neon Knights” and complimented him on it. Wilton also provided a great solo in “Red Rain,” and a couple of other tracks on the album. Mike Stone was also very involved on the album, playing lead on just as many songs as Wilton, including “Welcome to the Machine.”

Touring

Queensryche embarked on a tour in support of Take Cover in 2007-2008. The tour was an interesting one, as the band decided to run a contest where they provided fans sections of three songs (“Welcome to the Machine,” “Neon Knights,” and “Synchronicity II”), and told to record their vocals. A winner would be chosen for each of the shows, and the singer would appear on-stage to perform the song with Queensryche. Ultimately, at the end of the U.S. tour, a winner would be selected out of all the performers, and that singer would get a guest role on Queensryche's next studio album. The winner was Vincent Solano (we'll get to his performance on the next record later on).

Queensryche toured throughout 2008 on the album, although it'd be a mistake to say the whole year was touring in support of Take Cover. It was mostly the early 2008 shows (through the show in Seattle on Mar. 1, 2008) that was really devoted to Take Cover. After that, Queensryche did a number of fly-in dates at casinos and fairs, and toured Europe again using a “hits” setlist, throwing in a cover tune or two along the way.

Samsara's top-2 on Take Cover: Welcome to the Machine, Red Rain.

Next up: American Soldier...

[Mister Gold]

I got into Queensryche around this time in the summer of 2008. I was a huge Iron Maiden fan at this point and frequently watched VH1 in my free time as a teenager to watch a bunch of old 80's metal-era music videos and came across the video for "I Don't Believe In Love" and then immediately becoming interested in the band. I didn't listen to anything new by them, but I got a hold of Operation: Mindcrime and the most recent Greatest Hits album they'd released at that point (I think it was called "Sign of the Times?").

I remember really loving the first half or so of that GH album and then not caring much for what I was hearing once it got into HITNF-era stuff onward. In fact, I vividly remember deciding to check out the O:M2 track that was on there and really not liking it much and wondering how the hell the band got from Point A to Point B.

[Samsara]

Guys, I totally forgot the Sign of the Times release that came in 2007. Totally slipped my mind. Generally speaking, Queensryche released a career-defining retrospective called Sign of the Times - The Best of Queensryche in 2007. It came in multiple versions. A single CD, a digital release, and a deluxe edition that had demos from Geoff's band prior to Queensryche (MYTH) that had songs with similar titles to Queensryche classics, and a variety of rarities and alternate versions.

The most anticipated track was "Justified," which was written by Chris DeGarmo and included on the deluxe edition. This track (as mentioned earlier) was meant for Tribe, and in the liner notes, you can see the Tribe-era portion of the recording credits, along with the finishing credits of it (I believe it was mixed by Terry Date).

The digital version of the single CD has an alternate track list, which drops "All the Promises" and includes "You" (if my memory is working) from Hear in the Now Frontier.

I'll add this to the write-up. Sorry guys. Busy, busy weekend and week this week. I'll take more time and be more detailed on American Soldier.

[Grappler]

At the time, I loved cover albums, so this seemed cool.  I was really surprised by the lack of metal songs, given that QR was a metal band.  At least they had a few of them on there, but I didn't care for a lot of the songs when it came out.

Red Rain is the standout - Geoff's vocals fit that song perfectly and still sound so smooth.  The metal songs like Neon Knights show that in 2007/2008, he couldn't hold a candle to Dio, who was touring with Heaven and Hell during those years and still knocking it out of the park every night.  I like Welcome to the Machine too, and Bullet the Blue Sky takes me back to seeing them play it on the Q2K tour, when Wilton took his guitar off and held it by the strap over the front row.  We all got to jump up and smack the strings to create the feedback/dissonant guitar sounds during the song.

Aside from that, I've completely lost interest in Take Cover.  This is around the time that I started disliking the way Geoff's vocals were sounding on the studio albums, and the song choices mostly bore me.  But again, props to Slater for coming up with some great arrangements to make these songs a bit more Queensryche, or at least to beef them up a bit.

And kudos to the band for the fan contest to sing on stage with them in each city.  That's a really neat thing to do to tie in the covers album with the live show.  But they didn't really play much from the album on the headlining tour - 2-3 songs at most. 

[bosk1]

Take Cover was an interesting album.  On one hand, covers albums usually aren't very noteworthy at all simply because they are just little stopgap projects to tide fans over until the next album.  This one was noteworthy for some of the wrong reasons.

The songs:  As Samsara pointed out, the song selection wasn't what most would have expected from the band.  Yeah, there were some really cool selections.  Metal versions of Welcome To the Machine and Synchronicity II?  Sign me up!  But lots that left a lot to be desired. 

The vocals:  Geoff Tate had turned in some spotty vocal performances in the past.  But this was the first time on a studio album that he sounded truly awful and left fans astounded as to how a professional singer could have turned in such a subpar performance for a studio album and somehow thought it was fit for release.  The vocals are far and away the weak link on this album, and this was the start of a VERY bad trend in that direction.  The vocals SHOULD have been given more attention.  Geoff's live vocals on Bullet the Blue Sky even tanked that song, which is a real shame.  They could have overdubbed those.

For those reasons, the album got few spins from me.  But again, it was "just a covers" album anyway, so I wasn't expecting much. 

The tour was something different altogether.  Unfortunately, it was also disappointing, but for much different reasons.  Samsara mentioned the contest above.  I entered with a cover of Neon Knights.  And if I may say so myself, I killed it.  Whoever was listening to the demos thought highly enough of my performance that I was chosen.  Unfortunately, there was a logistical snag, and nobody notified me that I had been chosen until their tour manager called me 30 minutes before the show, which was a 2 hour drive away.  There was just no way I could possibly make it. 

What happened next was pretty cool.  Susan Tate contacted me directly and apologized for the miscommunication.  She then said that the contest had been canceled for the next show, Portland, but that if I could make it to that show, she could reinstate it because they had a couple of other entries as well.  Another factor was that this was winter, and I had gotten really sick and completely lost my voice.  So even if I had gotten notice of the S.F. show in time, it is doubtful that I could have sung anyway.  This gave me an extra 2 days to try to let my voice recover.  So I was in. 

We drove up to Portland, dropped the kids off with some friends, and headed to the theater.  My voice was STILL in really bad shape, so I was VERY nervous about whether I could sing at all.  I talked to a few different people and got varying degrees of advice about how to play it, from doing lots of warmup to very little warmup, and lots of things in between.  Ultimately, my voice was in a place where it was difficult to even talk, let alone sing.  I did some VERY gentle warmup and figured that just resting the voice was the best option. 

We arrived at the theater.  Beautiful place in downtown Portland.  I met Fozzy again the lobby and chatted just a bit.  I also met the other two contestants, and we got a backstage tour and were told how the contest would work.  For our trouble in having to drive all the way up there, my wife and I got to pick some shirts and other swag from the shop (and got free copies of the Mindcrime II CD and DVDs, as well as Take Cover).  So, here's how the contest works:  Before the opener, Fozzy and the tour manager go onstage and explain to the crowd what is going on.  Each of the 3 contestants comes out and basically does karaoke to the backing track of the song they have chosen.  After all 3, we all come back out on stage together and the crowd picks the winner by cheering, and Fozzy uses a db meter to see who got the loudest cheers.  The other two contestants were girls, and they were pretty good.  A girl named Robyn did Neon Knights and did a pretty good job with it.  The next girl went and did Welcome.  She did a good job as well, but not as good as Robin did with Neon Knights, so I knew it was going to be me or Robyn.  Would my voice hold up?  I got my answer halfway through the first verse.  That first verse sounded fine, but I knew my voice would be gone by the end of the chorus.  I ended up having to talk through the last few lines, unfortunately.  So, that was that.  Robyn won.  I didn't get to come back and out and take the stage with the band later.  But, hey, I got to basically do karaoke in front of 2,000 or so people, and it was fun, even if my voice did die on me halfway through.  I then took my seat and just enjoyed the show.

And the show itself was pretty good.  Don Dokken did an acoustic set as the opener.  It was fairly entertaining.  But, man, talk about a voice being blown out.  His was gone.  Queensryche's set was fun.  It was a pretty good selection of songs spanning most of their albums, and a rarity or two as well (I believe this was the tour where they did Last Time in Paris--which setlist.fm confirms: https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/queensryche/2008/newmark-theatre-portland-or-3bd79888.html).  It was a fun show, and a good time, even if I may have been admittedly VERY jealous when Robyn eventually took the stage to do Neon Knights, and I had to sit there and watch it knowing I could have done it better if my voice was there.  But that said, no complaints.  I had fun, and it was a cool experience nonetheless.

[Mebert78]

Upon reading the latest entry, I was shocked to read that "All the Promises" was included on Sign of the Times: The Best of Queensryche.  Unreal.  I never bought that one, since I have the band's other greatest hits album.   

[Mladen]

Great story, Bosk! 

[Grappler]

Upon reading the latest entry, I was shocked to read that "All the Promises" was included on Sign of the Times: The Best of Queensryche.  Unreal.  I never bought that one, since I have the band's other greatest hits album.

That was pretty well ridiculed when the album came out.  Until There Was You and All the Promises were dropped to add Empire and You.  Why they added two sappy ballads rather than including Empire and You, the former being one of the band's signature songs, and the latter being a nice, upbeat song, is beyond me.

There's really no point to the Sign of the Times compilation aside from Justified (which I still think is a boring song with dry production).  The second disc with the rarities was neat, but the only unreleased songs were a few of the Myth demos, a few of the warning demos (yay, yet another version of Prophecy...) and Della Brown acoustic.  The rest of the songs were already part of the bonus tracks from the album reissue series from 2003. 

It would have been cooler if they put more of the demos out, especially those that differed from the album versions. 

[jjrock88]

I was hoping for more demos on that greatest hits, but the different renditions of songs was cool to hear.  I thought the greatest hits from 2000 was a much better selection.

Take Cover did almost nothing for me.  Besides the Sabbath tune and Red Rain, I really didn't like any of the songs on the release and ended up getting rid of it.  This was the first album that Geoffs vocals stood out to me in a bad way.

[Samsara]

Red Rain is absolutely magnificent. I like Welcome to the Machine a lot too, but felt Stone was a tad shrill, and think they should have had Wilton do that solo. But the arrangement is really cool.

Here's my wife's submission.  www.anybodylistening.net/images/neonknights-entry.mp3

She did a good job. It was a toss up between Neon and Machine, and we rolled the dice (unsuccessfully) with Neon. It was a lot of fun recording. My lone contribution was suggesting the harmonized vocals on "again and again," if I remember right. 

[TAC]

What is the track listing on Take Cover?

[WilliamMunny]

Red Rain is absolutely magnificent. I like Welcome to the Machine a lot too, but felt Stone was a tad shrill, and think they should have had Wilton do that solo. But the arrangement is really cool.

Here's my wife's submission.  www.anybodylistening.net/images/neonknights-entry.mp3

She did a good job. It was a toss up between Neon and Machine, and we rolled the dice (unsuccessfully) with Neon. It was a lot of fun recording. My lone contribution was suggesting the harmonized vocals on "again and again," if I remember right. 

She sounds pretty good!

I am not sure how this was off my radar, save for the fact that the covers record was such a turn-off I distinctly remember just being over Queensryche at this point

[Samsara]

What is the track listing on Take Cover?

Welcome to the Machine
Heaven on Their Minds
Almost Cut My Hair
For What It's Worth
Innuendo
Neon Knights
Synchronicity II
Red Rain
Odiessa
Bullet the Blue Sky (live)

She sounds pretty good!

On her behalf, thank you. That was her first time in a professional recording studio with a real producer. She's since cut an EP of originals and cover tunes.

[TAC]

Heaven on Their Minds
Almost Cut My Hair
For What It's Worth
Red Rain
Odiessa

I'm not familiar with these songs.

[Phoenix87x]

At the time, Take cover came out and I took a listen and was like whatever. I didn't like their versions of the songs and didn't even really like the songs in general, so yeah. What evs

[El Barto]

The funny thing is that I regarded Take Cover as a Tate vanity project. One where he utterly failed. Seemed to me that half the songs were songs where the singer is supposed to stand out, and the bar is set high by earlier performances. Covering a particularly challenging song is about like a fake punt. Whether or not it was a great call or a damn-fool thing to do is 100% outcome driven, and this was pretty much a Chuck Pegano album.

Seriously, you're not going to beat Carl Anderson at his own game. Same with Queen and Bono.

[jjrock88]

Great vocal performance from your wife Brian

[TAC]

Who is Carl Anderson?

[DragonAttack]

Wish one could put likes or  next to posts, Bosk.  That is one hell of a great story.

btw... Carl Anderson played Judas in the JC Superstar movie (as well as stage).  And, don't get me started on 'Innuendo' (just yet) 

[El Barto]

Who is Carl Anderson?

He's the reason Tate wanted to sing Heaven on their Minds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-voeq7Cebo

[bosk1]

Wish one could put likes or  next to posts, Bosk.  That is one hell of a great story.

Thanks, man.  A partial consolation prize as well was that, even though I didn't get the chance to sing with Queensryche at this show, which would have been amazing, I did get to sing onstage with Y&T for a similar type of contest a few months prior, in August of 2007.  At that particular show, Jeff Scott Soto joined the band immediately after me and attempted the same song, and had to quit and turn it back over to Dave Meniketti halfway through.  So I was pretty sympathetic to having one's voice fail in the middle of a song.

There is also an epilogue to the Portland story as well that has to do with me getting to do an after show meet and great with Queensryche.  But I'm saving that for when we get to American Soldier.

[PowerSlave]

Heaven on Their Minds
Almost Cut My Hair
For What It's Worth
Red Rain
Odiessa

I'm not familiar with these songs.

I've never heard Take Cover, but I recognize some of those song titles. Of course, I was raised on the first two Crosby, Stills and Nash records, so I'm going to assume that "Almost Cut My Hair" is theirs. Red Rain is most likely a Peter Gabriel cover. And I can guarantee that you've heard "For What It's Worth" from Buffalo Springfield, but the song title might be throwing you off.

I'm not familiar with the other songs.

[TAC]

. And I can guarantee that you've heard "For What It's Worth" from Buffalo Springfield, but the song title might be throwing you off.

Just checked. Definitely. Why on earth would QR want to cover that?


Just checked the QR version. What an absolute f'n piece of crap that is. Holy shit.

[PowerSlave]

. And I can guarantee that you've heard "For What It's Worth" from Buffalo Springfield, but the song title might be throwing you off.

Just checked. Definitely. Why on earth would QR want to cover that?


Just checked the QR version. What an absolute f'n piece of crap that is. Holy shit.

The only thing that I've ever heard is their cover of Queen's Innuendo. It was one of the worst musical experiences of my entire life, so I had no desire to hear the rest. I'm not surprised in the least to hear you mention that they managed to slaughter another classic as well.

[DragonAttack]

'Take Cover'....the gas masks say it all.

Take your thumb and forefinger, plug your nose, and that is how Tate sounds on 'Innuendo'.

And that is what you need to plug your nose from the stench of that release.  Putrid! 

What a frickin' embarrassment!!!

[Kwyjibo]

Some of the cover tunes could have been nice in a Queensryche-like arrangement, but when I heard that Geoff wasn't giving a shit with his vocals I never cared to check them out. And to learn now that the arrangements weren't even done by the band but by Slater instead, leaves me scratching my head. So the band wouldn't even put some effort in the record? Why do it then in the first place?

[DragonAttack]

At one time.....for me

#1  Freddie Mercury [there is no one close]
#2  Steve Perry.
#3  Dennis DeYoung
#4  Geoff Tate
#5  Sammy Hagar, Bruce Dickinson (and I cannot stand Iron Maiden), Jon Anderson, the list goes on, but you get my gist

To say that I was frickin' excited x10 to hear QR's version, you have no idea.  But you have to bring your 'A' game (not your D-)

To listen to how horrendous and nose pinching Mr. Tate was

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPmG4UCP7xo

and now, enjoy what 19M+ have enjoyed, and cleanse your ears of the previous stench

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2N0TkfrQhY

[Cruithne]

Until Tate was given the heave-ho, OM:II would be the last QR effort I'd buy. I toyed with getting Take Cover for a while but never got round to it.

Eventually I heard the cover version of Innuendo Money well kept in my pocket.

[cfmoran13]

Queensryche embarked on a tour in support of Take Cover in 2007-2008. The tour was an interesting one, as the band decided to run a contest where they provided fans sections of three songs (“Welcome to the Machine,” “Neon Knights,” and “Synchronicity II”), and told to record their vocals. A winner would be chosen for each of the shows, and the singer would appear on-stage to perform the song with Queensryche. Ultimately, at the end of the U.S. tour, a winner would be selected out of all the performers, and that singer would get a guest role on Queensryche's next studio album. The winner was Vincent Solano (we'll get to his performance on the next record later on).

Vinnie Solano went to my high school.  He was three years older than me.  I remember him fronting a band called Wild Kitty in one of our HS talent shows in '91 or '92. 

Pink zebra print spandex pants and all.   

To this day, I don't know if I've ever heard his performance on American Soldier because I've never listened to the entire album.

[bosk1]

To this day, I don't know if I've ever heard his performance on American Soldier because I've never listened to the entire album.

Dude, it's probably the best song on American Soldier and one of the best post-DeGarmo songs the band has done.  You should check it out.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qjSmODTQsk