That tour was very well attended as far as I could tell. Maybe Samsara could chime in on that. I'm pretty sure my show was.
Yeah, the sheds were pretty full man. Jones Beach was.
I think Samsara has documented that the band's implosion was underway on Promised Land, and to me, after hearing the album, that makes total sense, and justifies my dissatisfaction with it. I had paid extremely close attention to Queensryche from the release of the EP, and sometimes a band's strife does manifest itself in the music. Many people point to Hear In The Now Frontier for this, but I hear it in PL.
That is true, some of the internal stuff came to a head after Empire (divorces and stuff which led to a lot of the introspective material). When I found out about that retrospectively years after PL, I just thought it was angst bringing out great songs (as a fan of the record). Bad experiences usually turn into great songs, and with PL, I certainly thought that.
What I think gets overlooked sometimes with PL and with HITNF is that one of the band's major riff writers wasn't nearly as prolific during these cycles. Wilton was huge for QR from the EP-Empire. And then after Empire, he took a backseat for various reasons. Then again, most folks love "Damaged" off PL, and Wilton didn't write that song -- Chris did, musically. So the "metal" aspect of QR was still there. I just think the band was exploring new ways of writing, and didn't want to get pigeon-holed as one thing. It was very smart of them until they took a turn that wasn't favored by the mainstream (PL). The fickle nature of folks (hell, we're all guilty of it).
Do I think the "strife" as TAC put it steered the direction of the PL record -- yes. Internal band strife, but personal issues stemming from the band's success with Empire. Absolutely. Folks also forget that "Real World" and "Dirty Lil Secret" were both written in 1993, at the "start" of the work that would become Promised Land. Both those songs are really solid tracks, with the latter not being dark, but instead some cheeky social commentary. The band elected to pursue a different direction. But I also think the natural evolution of the band has been trending more and more toward atmosphere and simplicity at the time anyway. The success of "Silent Lucidity" and that approach they used for the Empire record of making sure the songs were complete, standalone single-ready tunes had a lot to do with that. And frankly, you could have released all 11 songs from Empire as singles.
Hear in the Now Frontier was much more accessible than PL, and frankly, I think it would have been more successful had it come after Empire because it was more radio friendly. The band seemed to take the Empire approach, but with more alternative stylings, drawing from the success bands from Seattle in the 90s had. Sign of the Times and You were really big at radio...and then EMI shut its doors, and there went the push. And QR went down the drain with it.
I don't hear "strife" in HITNF at all, honestly. I hear a band's major songwriter trying his best to get the band's profile up by trying to tap into a more mainstream element that he, was into at the time (DeGarmo was/is a big fan of Alice in Chains and Soundgarden, and HITNF sounds a ton like SG's Down on the Upside). Frankly, HITNF has absolutely grown on me BIG time over the years. So much ear candy on there guitar-wise - just not in the metal sense. But if you just listen to the guitars, I'd argue that it was QR's best guitar album since Operation: Mindcrime.
I wrote a retrospective review on it a few years back that really sums up my thoughts on it -
https://anybodylistening.net/hitnf-20.htmlI didn't really hear the connection to SG's Down on the Upside until about a year after I wrote that. But if you listen to both records, you'll absolutely hear it. And to me, that signaled that DeGarmo was doing his best to bring his band back to relevancy. And as I said earlier it would have worked, IMO, had EMI not folded right after the album was released (Sign of the Times had been out for six weeks, and then You dropped, and then a couple weeks after You was on radio, EMI closed up shop). It has the right material for the right time. That record was FULL of songs with single potential. Sign of the Times, You, Reach, The Voice Inside, and Some People Fly with that great melody in the chorus could all have done it for them.
Folks might not have liked that evolution, songwriting-wise, but it WAS distinctly Queensryche. The distinction of Chris guitar, the melody choices, etc., screamed QR. But did it in a much more alternative way. Was it my favorite album? Of course not. But I absolutely see what Chris was going for, and he would have gotten them there if EMI hadn't gone belly-up.
I don't think HITNF is as strong an album as PL, Empire, or anything before it. I'm not saying THAT. But I'm saying it likely would have been hailed as a return to form of sorts (at least in the eyes of the mainstream) had the financial support been behind it. It had the single-ready material for it, a sound that was popular for the time, a great combination of striking artwork and imagery with extremely good (You and Anytime/Anywhere aside) lyrical content to hook into. EMI's nosedive is what killed HITNF...not the songs or direction.
Topic: Official Queensryche thread: Kickstart the next album (Read 691990 times)
