Official Queensryche thread: Kickstart the next album

[Setzer]

I bought The Warning today so I now have all five of their first albums. And I also got Condition Human since I'm not eager to hear HITNF after Promised Land disappointed me. 

I'm fairly sure the "Ear" album is easier to get into than Promised Land. It certainly has quite a good selection of tracks in my opinion

[Samsara]

I bought The Warning today so I now have all five of their first albums. And I also got Condition Human since I'm not eager to hear HITNF after Promised Land disappointed me. 

Kattoelox,

You'll love Condition Human. And The Warning's mix is horrendous. I am sure you read all about it on the discography thread. But that record really slays, despite the mix and other stuff. Hear in the Now Frontier is more accessible than PL, but it really does take a turn a bit toward's Queensryche's version of alternative hard rock. Not entirely, that would be an error to think QR is playing alternative. But the production and style really have a whiff of it for sure. I really enjoy it. A lot more than I used to. I have a much bigger appreciation for what DeGarmo was trying to do with it. Still a bunch of filler, but some other damn good songs.

Enjoy the trip!

[ReaperKK]

Man I can't get enough of this QR drama. To a casual observer it seems the largest failing of QR ever maintaining success was their own personalities/ego.

[The Walrus]

It'll be nice to listen to the actual Warning proper, since the copy I picked up is the true blue original from 1984. The copy on Spotify was the expanded and remastered version with live tracks peppered between the studio ones so it was frustrating to listen to as a newbie. And Samsara, that's great to hear about Condition Human. I caught a moment of the music as I was ripping the CD but will get around to it next week sometime if I don't hear it tomorrow, but it sounded awesome, much more what I wanted from the band instead of Promised Land. Rock on 

[Grappler]

I bought The Warning today so I now have all five of their first albums. And I also got Condition Human since I'm not eager to hear HITNF after Promised Land disappointed me. 

The only songs from HITNF that you should check out are Sign of the Times, You, Reach, Hit the Black, and Spool.  Reach and Hit the Black are two of the more heavier sounding songs, and Spool continues their tradition of having awesome, epic album-closing tracks. 

[IDontNotDoThings]

I bought The Warning today so I now have all five of their first albums. And I also got Condition Human since I'm not eager to hear HITNF after Promised Land disappointed me. 

The only songs from HITNF that you should check out are Sign of the Times, You, Reach, Hit the Black, and Spool.  Reach and Hit the Black are two of the more heavier sounding songs, and Spool continues their tradition of having awesome, epic album-closing tracks.

 

[Cool Chris]

Man I can't get enough of this QR drama.

The funniest/sadest thing about all this drama is that this is for a band whose last big hit album was 27 years ago! (23 if you count PL)

[Mladen]

I probably posted this several pages ago, but I for one thought Queensryche did a fine job with their interpretation of the alternative/grunge sound on Hear in the now frontier. It's not a great album by any means, but the style itself is not the problem. Had they cut out three tracks (I nominate Save me, All I want and Some people fly) and handed off the album to someone that could have done a better production, it would have been a fun album to listen to once in a while.

Sometimes I wish the band ended with Promised land, but even had the HITNF been the last one, it would have still been interesting. Even Q2K, as mediocre as it is, had some integrity and the band at least tried to deliver, so it wouldn't have been a shame if that was the last album. The whole next decade is a HUGE mess.

[IDontNotDoThings]

(I nominate Save me, All I want and Some people fly)

2 of those are my favourites on the album, so needless to say I disagree.

Mine would be Hit The Black & Anytime/Anywhere (so go right from All I Want to Spool). While there are other tracks I find worse than these two, these are the two tracks that I think serve the least purpose in the overall album. As much as I hate Saved, it'd be a lot less heavy of an album had it not been included. Anytime/Anywhere on the other hand, I don't think there's anyone who'd actively say it's their favourite. & HTB the worst QR song ever imo, so yeah I'd kick that out too.

[MirrorMask]

In retrospect, it sounds Queensryche made a bad deal by giving up the rights to play Mindcrime as a whole to Tate. Given how playing classic albums on an anniversary has been the live rave for aging artists for quite a few years now, that was probably the one card they still had to play as far as attracting decent size crowds over the span of a whole tour, and they handed that card to Tate.  This band is a disaster, and let's face it, pretty much has been for over 20 years now.

I think they did the right move. They kept the name, got rid of Geoff, and the price to pay was to not play anymore in full an album that

- Has been played in full many times
- Has been played in lenghty suites dedicated to it many times

That was a small sacrifice to make, considering that nothing forbids them to play 2/3 of the album in a row during the shows.

They should have honored other classic albums however like Rage for Order and Empire and play those in full.

[Samsara]

(I nominate Save me, All I want and Some people fly)

2 of those are my favourites on the album, so needless to say I disagree.

Mine would be Hit The Black & Anytime/Anywhere (so go right from All I Want to Spool). While there are other tracks I find worse than these two, these are the two tracks that I think serve the least purpose in the overall album. As much as I hate Saved, it'd be a lot less heavy of an album had it not been included. Anytime/Anywhere on the other hand, I don't think there's anyone who'd actively say it's their favourite. & HTB the worst QR song ever imo, so yeah I'd kick that out too.

If Hear in the Now Frontier was just these:

Sign of the Times
You
The Voice Inside
Some People Fly
Chasing Blue Sky (should have been an album track instead of a b-side)
Reach
Hero
Hit the Black
spOOL

>>>>>>>>>>then I'd absolutely love the record. I'm not sure of the running time for nine songs, but that would have worked for me. The lyrics to all of those are great except for You, and I really dig all those songs big time. The problem for me is the six other songs just sound like filler. Get a Life has terrible lyrics, Cuckoo's Nest has good lyrics, bad music, Miles Away goes nowhere, Saved is heavy to be heavy that sounds like a demo, All I Want is too Beatle-ly, and is more like a demo, and Anytime/Anywhere is interesting musically, but trash lyrically.

I've never actually put that together as a playlist, but I should. I still listen to HITNF in rotation, but I mostly just let the album run (although I do skip Miles Away, All I Want, and Anytime/anywhere).

[jjrock88]

That is one of the main hang ups for me for HITNF.  Just so much mediocre filler.

The less is more mentality is so true in alot of things and a condensed version of this album would make it so much better.  Still a downgrade I think for the music that Queensryche had been putting out, but much more playable and enjoyable with only 9 or 10 songs on it.

[TAC]

Just so much mediocre filler.

Is there any other kind of filler?

[MirrorMask]

Just so much mediocre filler.

Is there any other kind of filler?

Yeah, the smashing hit fillers. Paranoid and You've Got Another Thing Coming are both fillers in the actual sense of the word: songs written to fill up an otherwise too much short album.

[jjrock88]

Just so much mediocre filler.

Is there any other kind of filler?

The "this really blows" filler.

[IDontNotDoThings]

(I nominate Save me, All I want and Some people fly)

2 of those are my favourites on the album, so needless to say I disagree.

Mine would be Hit The Black & Anytime/Anywhere (so go right from All I Want to Spool). While there are other tracks I find worse than these two, these are the two tracks that I think serve the least purpose in the overall album. As much as I hate Saved, it'd be a lot less heavy of an album had it not been included. Anytime/Anywhere on the other hand, I don't think there's anyone who'd actively say it's their favourite. & HTB the worst QR song ever imo, so yeah I'd kick that out too.

If Hear in the Now Frontier was just these:

Sign of the Times
You
The Voice Inside
Some People Fly
Chasing Blue Sky (should have been an album track instead of a b-side)
Reach
Hero
Hit the Black
spOOL

>>>>>>>>>>then I'd absolutely love the record. I'm not sure of the running time for nine songs, but that would have worked for me.

That'd be 37:37 - longer than the self-titled

[Cruithne]

(I nominate Save me, All I want and Some people fly) and handed off the album to someone that could have done a better production, it would have been a fun album to listen to once in a while.

All three of those are songs I really like. Mind you, there's very little of HiTNF that I don't like and I'm in the minority that love that album... If I were going to drop any song it would be Hero and even that song I quite like!

I do think it was a mistake to go all in on the dry, stark production style, though.

[Mladen]

I can see that Cuckoo's nest and Get a life are usually thought of as weaker songs on the album, but I love both of those. Had they been released by other band, they would have been hits. Also, Hit the black is quite heavy as well, the opening riff gets me going. 

[Samsara]

I do think it was a mistake to go all in on the dry, stark production style, though.

As do I. I've always wondered what HITNF would sound like remixed and with a less dated production value. Doubt it'll ever happen, but it would probably be pretty cool.

[bill1971]

HITNF is a good example that DeGarmo is not the savior everyone thinks he is. This album shows that he was going downhill, well at least for that one. I love his tracks on Tribe but I also love many of the non-Degarmo tracks on Tribe as well.

[Samsara]

HITNF is a good example that DeGarmo is not the savior everyone thinks he is. This album shows that he was going downhill, well at least for that one. I love his tracks on Tribe but I also love many of the non-Degarmo tracks on Tribe as well.

I think it is evidence that he and the band pushed the boundary of what Queensryche can do musically too far. You can have open-minded fans, but at the end of the day, when you strip away what made the band interesting and popular to people in the first place, you're setting yourself up for career suicide.

I think DeGarmo's writing followed a natural progression, but HITNF lacked the production and careful working over the songs to really make them work. If I remember right, that was basically how the record was explained in the press. They didn't do a ton of demos. They came up with a song, ran through it, recorded it. There wasn't a lot of time given to sit on the songs, and work them over. I think that approach was a big mistake.

The DeGarmo tracks in the Tribe sessions (Open, Desert Dance, Falling Behind, Art of Life, Doin' Fine, and Justified) sort of address that to a degree. The production is better, and those songs were worked over a bit, at least musically, before being recorded (Scott has mentioned multiple times that Desert Dance went through many iterations before they finished it). The result is, those tracks sound like a natural continuation of where they went on HITNF, but with more care and work.

I really do appreciate HITNF much more now. Lyrically, I find it to be one of the band's most diverse. A few clunkers, but some really good social commentary and the intelligent bent we came to know from them (again, with some of the songs being clunkers in that department).

[devieira73]

Anyways, has anyone pre-ordered the album?

I pre-ordered Condition Human on the PledgeMusic, I think like one year before the album was released and, as a "cool bonus to the faithfull fan", my CD didn’t have the regular european bonus track, much less the another 2 others tracks released on vinyl. I paid more, ahead of time and received less...I’ll pass this time.

I asked about it on Facebook and the response was that:
It will be the same as last year.  The label has separate agreements to release bonus tracks to other distributors to help get our album released world-wide.  It's like that for most artists, sorry!

Well, so it’s a label thing and not band’s fault... anyway, it was cool the band to clarify that!

[The Walrus]

Friend of mine is sending me the Promised Land CD-ROM game. I look forward to its early 90s crappiness 

[?]

My personal tracklist for HITNF would be something like this (46:40 in total, not too far from Rage's length):

1. The Voice Inside
2. You
3. Sign of the Times
4. Hit the Black
5. Hero
6. Miles Away
7. Reach
8. Chasing Blue Sky
9. Saved
10. Some People Fly
11. spOOL

To me that would be a pretty solid record, with the awful clunkers (Anytime/Anywhere, Get a Life) and otherwise unfitting (All I Want) or meh (Cuckoo's Nest) songs removed. Not as great as the preceding 4 albums obviously, but I might actually prefer it to The Warning.

Anyways, has anyone pre-ordered the album?

I pre-ordered Condition Human on the PledgeMusic, I think like one year before the album was released and, as a "cool bonus to the faithfull fan", my CD didn’t have the regular european bonus track, much less the another 2 others tracks released on vinyl. I paid more, ahead of time and received less...I’ll pass this time.

I asked about it on Facebook and the response was that:
It will be the same as last year.  The label has separate agreements to release bonus tracks to other distributors to help get our album released world-wide.  It's like that for most artists, sorry!

Well, so it’s a label thing and not band’s fault... anyway, it was cool the band clarify that!

Ehh, looks like I'll order it from a regular record store instead then. I hated not getting any bonus tracks with the pledge CD last time.

[njfirefighter]

Setzer and njfirefighter, you both need to tone it down.  Just because you may disagree with or dislike somebody else's opinion doesn't give you the right go start attacking.  Your "attacks" were fairly mild, so this is more of an informal warning.  But I will say this before it escalates:  keep it respectful.

I certainly did not "attack" anyone. I wasn't even talking to anyone in particular, I merely posted my thoughts on that band scenario and situation as a repost to give my perspective on what a two Queensryche situation would look like and how it would fare. I'm only posting this on here because I was publicly called out on it. I'll PM you Bosk to discuss it further in private. I have posted in many other threads on here, I think that was an over-reaction. If you look through all my posts on this forum, I have steered clear of confrontation without incident.   

[Samsara]

Friend of mine is sending me the Promised Land CD-ROM game. I look forward to its early 90s crappiness 

The game itself is pretty dated. But the Big Log area and all the snippets are cool. And if you havent seen the videos shot for PL, they are on there.

[Cool Chris]

This discussion prompted to me to give HitNF a listen, which I haven't done in years. I recalled not ever enjoying this album in the slightest, and man, did that opinion not change at all. I don't have a ton of physical CDs, probably much less than most everyone here, and this is easily the worst one in my collection.

[jammindude]

This discussion prompted to me to give HitNF a listen, which I haven't done in years. I recalled not ever enjoying this album in the slightest, and man, did that opinion not change at all. I don't have a ton of physical CDs, probably much less than most everyone here, and this is easily the worst one in my collection.

....and it was almost all DeGarmo's doing too.    Ya, I actually got to the point where I genuinely enjoyed about 5 tunes...but that's 5 out of 14.   That album is mostly crap.    I honestly don't any of the albums after this are any better (except maybe Tribe) and I don't think they are any worse either (except for that Dedicated to Chaos abomination).  Everything from HitNF forward is just kindof....there.   A few enjoyable tracks, a handful of forgettable tracks, and some pieces of pure dreck. 

[Kwyjibo]

My tracklist for HITNF:

Sign Of The Times
Spool

Sadly, too short for a regular album. 

My issue with that record isn't the production (which isn't that great in itself) or the change of direction, it's just that most of the songs just plod along and they become boring very fast. I can't really say that they are bad, but so very very mediocre.

[IDontNotDoThings]

I rank HITNF as the 2nd worst QR album, so needless to say I'm not a fan.


Here's my ranking if anyone's curious
#1. Promised Land
#2. Operation: Mindcrime
#3. Operation: Mindcrime II (fite me)
#4. Empire
#5. Rage For Order
#6. Condition Human
#7. Tribe
#8.  S/T 2013
#9. The Warning (fite me)
10. American Soldier
11. Q2K
12. Hear In The Now Frontier
12.5. Frequency Unknown (if it counts, which it doesn't)
13. Dedicated To Chaos

[Bertielee]

I rank HITNF as the 2nd worst QR album, so needless to say I'm not a fan.


Here's my ranking if anyone's curious
#1. Promised Land
#2. Operation: Mindcrime
#3. Operation: Mindcrime II (fite me)
#4. Empire
#5. Rage For Order
#6. Condition Human
#7. Tribe
#8.  S/T 2013
#9. The Warning (fite me)
10. American Soldier
11. Q2K
12. Hear In The Now Frontier
12.5. Frequency Unknown (if it counts, which it doesn't)
13. Dedicated To Chaos

I'm gonna fight you for having OM : 2 so high and The Warning so low.   , but apart from that, no fighting needed. Would have put OM and Empire before PL though, but that's just me.

B.Lee

[IDontNotDoThings]

I rank HITNF as the 2nd worst QR album, so needless to say I'm not a fan.


Here's my ranking if anyone's curious
#1. Promised Land
#2. Operation: Mindcrime
#3. Operation: Mindcrime II (fite me)
#4. Empire
#5. Rage For Order
#6. Condition Human
#7. Tribe
#8.  S/T 2013
#9. The Warning (fite me)
10. American Soldier
11. Q2K
12. Hear In The Now Frontier
12.5. Frequency Unknown (if it counts, which it doesn't)
13. Dedicated To Chaos

I'm gonna fight you for having OM : 2 so high and The Warning so low.   , but apart from that, no fighting needed. Would have put OM and Empire before PL though, but that's just me.

B.Lee

[Samsara]

Haven't done the ranking thing in a while:

Original Lineup:

Operation: Mindcrime
The Warning
Rage for Order
Empire
Promised Land
Tribe EP (rating just the tracks the original lineup did)
EP (only this low because it is an EP)
HITNF

Whole Band all-time:

Operation: Mindcrime
The Warning
Rage for Order
Empire
Promised Land
Queensryche (2013)
American Soldier
Condition Human
Operation: Mindcrime II
EP
Tribe (looking at it as a full album)
HITNF
Q2k
***********
*************
**************
Dedicated to Chaos

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Surprised with PL's placement this time around. Guess I'm in a more metal mood lately.

[bosk1]

Hmm...

Empire
Promised Land
Condition Human
Mindcrime
Queensryche (2013)
HITNF
Rage for Order
American Soldier
Warning
Mindcrime II
EP
Tribe
Q2K
Dedicated To Chaos

[Samsara]

I will never understand how you can have Condition Human above Mindcrime. I know, taste and all that. But dude, c'mon. Condition Human is a really good record, but seriously? And I won't even bother with you putting HITNF over Rage. I know where that debate goes.