I had seen QR with Tate on the recent Mindcrime 1&2 tour and then opening for Judas Priest and they were atrocious, painful to watch.
That QR tour with Priest was a year before that MC 1 and 2 tour -- summer 2005. And I am not sure which show you were at, but I saw it multiple times, and Tate and the band were on fire. One of the best tours they did. Tate reached back to hit some notes, and really brought his A game since they were touring with Rob Halford, IMO. I have most of the bootlegs from that tour, and from what I remember, Tate was never really off on any of them.
have no problem with the remaining members making a living but you can’t really replace peak Tate or DeGarmo either as a single guitar player or the chemistry he and Wilton had as a guitar duo.
Absolutely agree.
I would also say you miss them as songwriters but Tate hasn’t written a decent song for a long time and neither has DeGarmo. I know DeGarmo hasn’t written much at all but he did come back for Tribe and that’s no better than most of the other post Promised Land records.
Well, that's personal preference. I think "Art of Life" is one of the best songs post-Promised Land that the band has its name on. And it was written by DeGarmo/Tate. And I quite enjoy "Falling Behind" and think it is severely underrated by people. Classic Queensryche. The subtle build, the social commentary, etc. But that's a subject for another day. Again, personal preference plays a role in saying whether something is better or worse than something.
I have enjoyed the TLT albums to varying degrees and consider them to be better than anything the band have done since Promised Land but they are not classics to me and don’t come close to the golden era of the band.
And that's fair for sure. And I agree that some of the TLT material is much better than most of the post-DeGarmo stuff. I'd argue, however, that the stuff on HITNF and the stuff on Tribe that DeGarmo was involved in has the classic QR traits to it (due to just the band's songwriting evolution with the original five) that make it very distinct, and very good.
A word on La Torre and good shows with him. I've seen Queensryche close to 40 times since 1995. Eight of those shows have been with TLT fronting the band, with the last one being Reno, Nev., in December 2013. Only once did I walk away (New Jersey, spring 2013) thinking it was a bad performance. And two nights later, Queensryche played my hometown for the first time ever, and TLT had one of the best shows I've ever heard. He learned how to power through a cold and I was really inspired about how he performed. It was jaw-dropping. (Of course a few nights later he sounded terrible at a show in the South, but that's besides the point - lol.)
The bottom line for me is this, and take it for what it's worth:
At the outset, the band seemed to very much parade the fact that TLT sounded like Tate, and TLT took pains to emphasize his similarities with Tate, but threw in that he was just him for the sake of appearing humble to people. He had a lot of range, tried to sing clean, and did his thing. But as time has gone on, it is quite apparent to anyone familiar with singing, that while TLT is very influenced by Tate and has adopted some of the phrasing Tate used, they are actually very different singers. I'd argue that TLT is naturally more like a cross between Dickinson and Anselmo. But TLT was talented enough to highlight as much of Tate as he could in his voice early on. Nowadays, it appears TLT has very much just reverted to fully being himself, in as much as the Tate-era QR material allows him to be. And that's OK, honestly, that's what he SHOULD do. He's the frontman of the band, he needs to make the songs his own.
But where Tate has lost some range, he still has a lot of stamina and a tone and richness to his voice that frankly, TLT just naturally doesn't have. It's no one's fault really -- I mean, you could argue that smoking took Tate's range away, just as it likely is the reason TLT can't his the real high notes cleanly any longer and has to scream them. But they just are different singers. There is a subtlety to the classic QR material that the current version of Queensryche just doesn't have. And that's not a knock -- it's just that the bands are DIFFERENT. And again, that's OK. Queensryche is more of a metal band now, with a singer who has a grittier tone. Some don't notice those differences, but I happen to, and I know I'm not the only one. They simply are different singers, and the band is completely different.
To rail on TLT mercilessly is just plain stupid. If you like what he does - great. If you're like me, and you appreciate the talent but don't really like how it translates to Queensryche, that's fine too. But to shit on TLT is wrong (not saying you Peter, I'm talking in generalities). The guy is a talented singer and does a good job on stage night after night. He has different strengths and weakness in comparison with Tate which have become more glaring as time has gone on. But as much as he is no longer my cup of tea, I think it's really shortsighted for anyone to slam him without any context. His voice seems to have lost range, and it hasn't gotten stronger. That's not a slam, that's an observation. But he's out there every night delivering the songs, better than most could, and I think that gets forgotten in the large scheme of things.
Topic: Official Queensryche thread: Kickstart the next album (Read 704631 times)
