Clearly the stuff with Todd is not on a par with QR in their prime which I would say just about includes PL, that’s some of the greatest metal ever released. I will argue with anyone however who says that it’s not miles better than anything they’ve released since, including HITNF with Tate and DeGarmo and the album DeGarmo came back to contribute on, was that called Tribe?
The Toddryche stuff at least sounds like classic QR. The songs aren’t quite up to that level for the most part (there are a few though that wouldn’t sound out of place on those albums) but it is recognisably QR unlike the awful stuff they put out before Tate got the boot. It’s not like it was one or two bad albums either, they had years upon years to turn things around under Tate’s leadership and just went from bad to worse, year after year, album after album. If you think you miss Tate, go and have a listen to Mindcrime 2 or American Soldier or whatever his last album with them was and then listen to the S/T or Condition Human. There’s literally no comparison.
"miles bettter" of course is subjective.
I think I'd say the material on the two TLT QR albums is better than most of the stuff post-Chris, for sure. But again, everything is so subjective. The way I look at it, Queensryche's music followed a very distinct evolutionary course. As the guys got older, better players, more experienced songwriters, they experimented and pushed around, and what came out of it was a catalog of very different sounding records that all had this recognizable thread in them. Speaking for me, that thread is what catches my ear.
When Chris left after HITNF (which is flawed, but I've come to really appreciate that record over 20 years), that thread stopped. Q2k, at least I think, is a good album, but sounds nothing like QR before it. And that's not because of QR's trend of releasing albums that differ from each other. It's because that songwriting evolution, that thread, had ceased, and a new one began.
When Chris came back for what amounts to half of the Tribe album, you can hear that thread/sonic evolution again. It's present. Those songs he wrote/co-wrote/recorded sound like a natural extension of HITNF, into something new. But Tribe is such an anomaly. It's like a Frankenstein Queensryche record. You hear the original band again, but then you hear how incomplete it is, like it was stitched together to get it out there. And it was -- DeGarmo left the process well before it was done. But again, that thread, that sonic evolution, in the songs Open, Desert Dance, Falling Behind, Art of Life, Doin' Fine, and Justified (written and partially recorded during Tribe) are all a natural connection/extension from HITNF -- the thread was extended.
After Tribe, that thread is gone. Mindcrime II was Slater/Stone doing the music. American Soldier was Slater/Gray. D2C was Slater/Gane/Gray/Rockenfield/Jackson (again, talking music, the lyrics are obviously by Tate). More like splotches than threads, because no threads were given time to actually develop.
Then you have self-titled, Condition Human, and the new record. There is for sure a new thread, and you can easily hear it from the first to second record, and I guarantee you'll hear it on the upcoming record.
But while the music of these two (soon to be three) albums is arguably, subjectively, "better" than what came after PL, it doesn't, trying to be as objective as possible, sound like that original thread. It has hints of it in the riffs, some of Wilton's solos, and some of the vocal phrasing. It sounds like, potentially, a band picking up after Empire and sticking with that Empire/Mindcrime sound might have done, if they hadn't made the choice they did.
To me, however, that evolutionary move from Empire to PL is distinctly QR, and absolutely, if you follow the track of their writing, what was the natural next step, without repeating themselves. And that thread, and the elements of it that made up Queensryche, is what I've grown over the years to really love and enjoy. It's a familiarity -- different songs, different vibes, but distinctly QR.
Toddryche, as you called it, has great songs, and in some ways, the albums are more in-line, style-wise, with what I generally listen to, as opposed to HITNF, or Tribe, etc. But while I would concede that, I would also say its almost a completely new band, which started with the template of the old one, and stitched its own unique thread, which for me, isn't quite as good as the original thread.
I hope that makes sense. I am not belittling your point at all, just trying to explain how I view it all, and why.
Topic: Official Queensryche thread: Kickstart the next album (Read 691286 times)
