I have zero expectations for either. Neither has done anything since the mid 90s to make me believe that they can suddenly deliver a consistently good record.
Yeah, I hear you. But the band and writing dynamic since then has been a bit unusual, too. Through Promised Land, the writing was ALWAYS very collaborative, with Chris DeGarmo being the glue that held everything together and put all the other members' ideas into something cohesive. Pretty much everyone contributed somewhat, even if it was just ideas, and Wilton contributed
heavily. Then you get to Hear In The Now Frontier, and everything changes because, for the first time, Chris not only has a new direction, but it is him completely in charge and doing most of the writing himself. (and, for the record, I LOVE that album and rank it ahead of several of their "classics") But after that, things REALLY change, and you can see how the writing dynamic is different on all the other albums going forward:
-Q2K: The band is more or less collaborating, but Kelly Gray is heavily contributing, and Geoff is really driving the ship. Although this album as a whole didn't work for me, it also represents a big shakeup in their lineup AND their writing dynamic. I would have liked to have seen where their sound would have gone if Kelly stayed onboard
as a member of the band and they had kept the collaborative writing style. But it's easy to see why this album was such an anomaly in terms of sound and style.
-Tribe: A very "hit and miss" album for most fans. There are songs that many consider a true return to form. And there is good reason for that. Chris was temporarily back in the band, and wrote with them for some of the songs. But the fact that he did not participate in all of them, and the fact that he didn't stay on to complete the product created an album that was kind of all over the place. There was a lot on there that sounded perfectly in place with the classic Queensryche sound, and a lot that was just not very good. Again, a very inconsistent album. But where Chris and the rest of the guys are involved together, it mostly sounds great.
-Mindcrime II: This is the big departure. Geoff is now in charge and the other guys are not writing or contributing hardly at all. Most songs are written by an outside writer (Slater) under Tate's direction. In fact, some of the songs are were pre-written for an entirely different band, but they were unused, and Tate liked them, so they were reworked with Tate's creative ideas. Not a band effort by any stretch. But the few songs that have contributions by other band members (e.g. Murderer?, the main riff of which was written by Wilton) sound pretty good.
-American Soldier: Same approach as Mindcrime II, but with even less contribuation by anyone not named Tate or Slater.
-Dedicated To Chaos: Again, the same, with some ideas contributed by Scott.
But the above is not written to defend Queensryche. I point all of that out to justify why I actually
do have some good expectations for the upcoming Queensryche official album. 1.
They are writing together collaboratively as a band again for the first time really since Promised Land. Three of the five guys involved here were part of this process back when it worked, and Wilton has again stepped back up to the forefront, from what I understand. 2. Add to the mix two new guys in Parker and Todd who are proving that they understand and want to be part of and grow the Queensryche legacy by developing the classic Queensryche sound rather than coming in and changing it up. 3. Add to the mix Jimbo Barton, who was involved with Empire and Promised Land and is a big reason those albums sounded as good as they do. 4. And finally, and perhaps more importantly, the snippets that have been released so far, while too brief to draw any definite conclusions from,
sound like Queensryche and sound a LOT better than most of what has been on any Queensryche album in a long time.
To sum up, I think there are very good reasons to have expectations for the Queensryche official album. Yeah, it's easy for those expectations to be unrealistic--the band still has a lot to prove, and I think it's premature and unrealistic to just assume a complete return to form that will blow everyone away and silence the critics. But by the same token, I think a
reasonable return to form, and a pretty solid album are VERY reasonable expectations at this point given what we have to go on.
The problem with the last few albums, minus Dedicated To Chaos, which was complete garbage, was that they were decent albums with some good high points, but lots of "just good" and lots of "not good" moments. And I kept having to realize that if not for the fact that I'm a long-time Queensryche fan, if these were albums by some new band I was not yet into, I probably would not have wasted my time on them. Here, I'm not expecting another Mindcrime, Empire, or Promised Land. But I definitely AM expecting something that will make me say, "Yeah, no matter who wrote this, this is simply a very good album."
Topic: Geoff Tate's "Operation: Mindcrime" (not Queensryche) (Read 148669 times)
