HITNF is not a great ALBUM. It has some real good songs, IMO. From Rage through PL, QR made great albums, and then sorta lost the plot.
On one hand, I commend Chris for steering the band more back toward a mainstream sound with HITNF, but by doing so, he was a couple years too late, and stripped the band of the depth that made them interesting to listen to. Some songs, like spOOL, maintain it, but for the most part, the stripped down approach doesn't work for a band like Queensryche...at least not an album's worth of material.
That said, one of the most underappreciated aspects of HITNF is the guitar playing. Chris and Michael are doing some really cool stuff that is for the most part, understated to highlight the groove of each of the songs. The solo in "You" is incredible, so is the one in "Hero."
Overall, Hear sits at the bottom in terms of original lineup work (which I consider to be EP-HITNF and then the half of Tribe that the entire band recorded...Open, Desert Dance, Falling Behind, Doin' Fine, Art of Life, Justified -- meant for Tribe, but finished afterward). But it does have some good tunes on it.
The filler really drags it down, however.
The current "Queensryche" is really Tateryche, and as such, it's just a wholly different animal with really not much writing being used from the original members. Q2k, Mindcrime II, American Soldier and Dedicated to Chaos have some moments (very, VERY few on the latter), but they really just don't sound like "Queensryche" because of the different writers that are composing the songs. Some are good, but not the same organic vibe because of the different majority writers.
Edit -- for those that don't know, Q2k was credited as "the band," but the majority songwriter was Kelly Gray. Scott, Michael and Ed had some music writing moments on it, but for the most part, it was Gray being Degarmo. The entire band recorded the record.
Mindcrime II was mostly Tate/Slater. Stone was given credit by Slater (part of Slater's publishing) because Slater felt since Stone was in the room with him day in and day out working on it, he deserved it. Wilton's credits (three) are for the basic riff in the song (Hands, Murderer) and for some of the arrangement (Hostage, which Eddie wrote the riff).
As for performance, anyone with an ear can tell that Stone did a lot of the guitars on the record. Michael is on Hostage, he's on I'm American, and he's on Murderer and The Hands, but even in some of the trade-off solos, you can tell it's Stone doing both parts. I am not saying I know that for 100 percent, but if you listen, you can hear it. Scott's drums also sound very weird, like they were worked on in the studio later. He plays different parts on Mindcrime at the Moore (the live release) so one has to wonder if he is on a lot of the record. As for bass, Slater is a bass player, and while I hear Eddie in there, I know for sure I hear Slater playing bass in a few songs.
On American Soldier, it was Slater/Gray/Tate on the entire thing, writing-wise (or Slater/Tate or Gray/Tate), except for a couple songs that were leftover tracks from Slave to the System, Rockenfield's other band with Gray and Brother Cane frontman Damon Johnson.
While the band recorded all of American Soldier, and Wilton wrote the solos, the songs themselves were not composed by Queensryche. From what we know, the songs were all PERFORMED by Wilton/Rockenfield/Jackson, with some bits by Gray and others.
On Dedicated to Chaos, Wilton was not involved in any writing (at least he got no credit), and not much of the playing it sounds like to these ears. Eddie and Scott were more involved in the writing, but the majority of the songs were written by Jason Slater, Kelly Gray, and Randy Gane (keyboardist of MYTH, Tate's band before QR who played off stage on the Rage tour for the band). Tate wrote the lyrics.
Topic: Official Queensryche thread: Kickstart the next album (Read 704685 times)
