Geoff Tate's "Operation: Mindcrime" (not Queensryche)

[ColdFireYYZ]

But the thing I really don't get is , that place looks packed with people. I can't believe people would actually show up to see this, I guess Geoff still has his group of blind sheep following whatever he puts out.

Its probably a combination of casual fans who don't know about the split and people with comp tickets, along with a few Tate fanboys.

[Jaq]

There's also the fact that you can't see BEHIND the camera. Any place looks packed only looking from the back row.

[Phantasmatron]

How can he swagger around on stage like he's some kind badass when he sounds like shit?  DOESN'T THE MAN HEAR HIS OWN VOICE?!

[Zook]

Honestly I didn't think that live footage was THAT bad. Sure Geoff sounds like ass compared to what he used to, but they make a decent cover band that can only land hole in the wall gigs. Whoever that woman is who's playing Sister Mary is bloody terrible though. Worse than Tate.

[PetFish]

You've probably seen this but I can't believe Taint's attitude:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d88du2GnAus

I'm not much of a Queensryche fan but I have their hits and Mindcrime and I know the players and the drama.  Truly pathetic.

[wolfking]

Yeah, that vid is classic.

[KevShmev]

How can he swagger around on stage like he's some kind badass when he sounds like shit?  DOESN'T THE MAN HEAR HIS OWN VOICE?!

The combination of delusion and arrogance can often be ugly.  This is a good example of that.

[bosk1]

Well, Cleopatra is streaming the entire Tatewreck album.  Here's my review, formed as I was listening:

Initial thoughts on some of the tracks:

Cold:  Not bad.  If the entire album were of this quality, it would be decent despite the strained, off-key vocals dragging it down.  The cool riff brings it up a bit.

Dare:  I am immediately struck by some of the typically boneheaded Tate lyrics that we have come to expect recently.  Then it goes off on a goofy tangent, and...not sure what this song is trying to be, but it fails.  Do not like.

Give It To You:  An early ballad.  Not good.  ...except for the guitar solo, which actually is quite good, even when it becomes a background lead when the vocals kick in.  This makes me actually interested in eventually finding out which of the guests did which solos.  Along these lines, let me revise my earlier statement about not listening to the album again after this.  If the other guitar solos are of this quality and there end up being a few tolerable songs, I may be more active about finding another used copy at some point in time for the sake of the solos.

Slave:  The music isn't bad.  Not bad guitar work at all, although still not up to what I would expect as the standard on a Queensryche record (which, of course, this is not).  Kind of in the vein of Hit The Black. 

In The Hands Of God:  Sounds like a song with plenty of potential as a dark, angsty song, but still manages to fall flat mainly because of poor vocal delivery and bad lyrical choices.  Thanks, Geoff.  Time and time again, as we have seen throughout the past decade or so, Geoff delivers glimmers of excellence that meander off the track and end up being ruined by poor creative decisions and phoned-in vocal performances.  Sounds like Tate said to Slater, "let's take Prince's Computer Blue, mix it with All The Promises, and try to make it sound like a mid-tempo heavy song off of Mindcrime 2."  That combo just doesn't work in my mind.

Running Backwards:  Like a lot of others, there is actually some pretty good guitar work.  This is the first song where I have actually even noticed the rhythm section.  Some decent creative work here, actually.  Once again, the vocals are the weakest link and, like many of the songs on American Soldier, ruin a song that otherwise showed promise and might have been pretty good.  And another good solo.

Life Without You:  Sounds like Q2k/DTC.  Meh.  Bad vocals.  Melodies that seem out of place.  This is about what I would expect of a Tate solo track.  No place for the Queensryche name on this.  Solo sounds like it could be Meniketti.

Everything:  Piano intro tempts me to hit skip right off the bat, but then we actually get an interesting guitar riff.  Then the vocals come in and kill it.  Geoff, do you honestly not realize how bad your singing has become?  Does no one have the backbone to stand up and tell you you don't sound good?  Do you even care?  /rhetoricalquestions  This song kind of epitomizes what is wrong with camp Tate.  As with a lot of what I've heard so far, and as with most of what has been put out on the last few albums, there actually is a lot of promise here.  But the ideas are not fleshed out enough for me and the VOCALS JUST KILL IT (both bad singing and bad vocal melodies).  The guitar and keyboard work in the song actually sounds pretty good to my ears, although, again, it doesn't sound like what I think Queensryche should be.  But if the vocals weren't so bad, this is something I would listen to.

Fallen:  Granted, I haven't listened all that closely and am not on a really good system or in a place where I can turn it up and really dig into the music.  But that being said, this is the first song where I have actually realized that there are two separate guitar parts in the song.  Vocals aren't quite as bad.  Yet another one that isn't as bad as I thought the standard fare on the album would be, but is predictably killed by bad singing.  However, I DO actually like the vocal melodies and feel they are appropriate for the music.  Yet another good guitar solo, but one that, unfortunately, the music doesn't give enough time to develop given the way the song is written.  Actually, as the song goes on, I take that back.  Interesting song structure here.  Most of the solo space is actually given to letting the solo develop further as an outro solo.  This...actually works.  This actually sounds a lot more like Meniketti's style than the one in Life Without You.

The Weight of the World:  This could have been good.  Anyone want to guess why I think it isn't?  When the vocal harmonies and then later, the drums, kick in, it starts to go downhill.  Some cool ideas that ultimately do not work well together.  This song to me highlights the problem with rushing the album.  Geoff's vocals aside, this song would have benefitted from more time to flesh out the ideas and make them work together.  Guitar solo mirrors my feelings of the song in general:  Some really cool moments, but feels very disjointed and all over the place to the point where I become too distracted by all the "noise" to enjoy the moments that actually do work.  And the guitar tone...yuck!

The re-records...why bother?  I Don't Believe In Love is especially painful, but these are all just bad.  A Queensryche tribute album by B-list bands would have sounded better.

Overall, I am a bit surprised.  This isn't as bad as I thought it would be, and there are more moments that I like than I would have thought.  But the ideas aren't fleshed out well at times, the vocal melodies are frequently half-baked, and the vocal delivery is just outright painful and bad most of the time.  But most of all, this sounds like a Geoff Tate solo effort and not like something that should have the Queensryche name attached.

Link, for those interested:  https://soundcloud.com/cleopatra-recs/sets/queensryche-frequency-unknown

[Nick]

Contemplating whether or not I want to listen to this or not... managed to go this long without listening to K&T.

[Phantasmatron]

The album's streaming?  Awesome.  Now I can satisfy my morbid curiosity without paying that dickbag a cent and helping the more legitimate version of the band outsell the shit out of him.

[bosk1]

Yeah, that pretty much sums up my feelings on the issue as well. 

[KevShmev]

You may not be paying money for it, but you are paying for it! I mean, why would anyone want to put their ears through that kind of suffering??

[toro]

I just came in to say this: Geoff Tate has the most puncheable face in the prog-rock world.

[theseoafs]

Don't have enough patience to listen to the new material, but these covers, man. This version of I Don't Believe in Love is just making me sad.

[DebraKadabra]

You may not be paying money for it, but you are paying for it! I mean, why would anyone want to put their ears through that kind of suffering??

 

[emtee]

I dislike him as a human being. Nothing can change that. But it's better than I expected and actually a few songs are pretty
good. I wish it had just sucked.

[Lowdz]

Listening now. Couple of decent songs in amongst a load of crap. MOstly better than DTC but how could it not be. In The Hands Of God is going for a RFO vibe but Tate hasn't got the chops. Sounds rushed though, but if he'd had all year he'd have pushed out something rushed and half-assed because he just doesn't care enough. If he did he would put some work in on his vocals.

[Perpetual Change]

Man, the first song is about as good as anything I expect on either QR album, but everything that's followed (so far- I'm not done) is pretty terrible.

[Lowdz]

Think you summed it up pretty accurately there Bosk1. Not much to add. Expected to hate it but there is a decent album there struggling to rise from the demo-like sound. it could have been pretty good, as it is it's not as bad as I thought it would be but it's sonically awful. When the backing vocals kicked in on Weight of The World I jumped out of my skin they were so jarring. It's a very good song not done any justice whatsoever. Maybe the real QR should cover it and do it properly... 

He should be shot for those re-records though. The real QR should use them in the court case as proof he is not QR.

[kirksnosehair]

You've probably seen this but I can't believe Taint's attitude:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d88du2GnAus

I'm not much of a Queensryche fan but I have their hits and Mindcrime and I know the players and the drama.  Truly pathetic.

I don't know if this has been posted yet, but one of my FB friends posted it today, it's a fan video of Tate's QR hacking their way through "The Mission"


https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4eyIIoUfaxc

[Lowdz]

Whenever I watch Kelly Gray he reminds me of a quote from one of my favourite tv programmes.

"Not my fault. Monkey bastard hands!"

[The Dark Master]

Here's the post I made on the Breakdown Room while listening to the record:

Stylistically, FU sounds very much in the vein of O:MII, and while that means it doesn't sound a damn thing like Queensryche, it also means it's not all together bad.  Unfortunately, the album as a whole is not particularly good, either.  There is some genuine, quality music and ideas on Frequency Unknown, but all too often, those ideas are underdeveloped and sound incomplete.  There are some very odd musical transitions and combinations in certain songs,  like the soft interlude in Dare that comes right before the solo, where parts of the tracks sound completely unrelated.  It's as if some of these songs were Frankenstein creations, pieced together from existing songs, but with no regard given to whether or not they actually fit together.  The result is very jarring and it makes the whole album sound disjointed and bizarre.  I don't really hear a lot of bad music per say, but I do hear some very questionable and arbitrary creative decisions.   Musically, this sounds better then DTC and K&T (not saying much, I know, but it's something, at least), but there virtually no flow or cohesion within many of the tracks, to say nothing of the album as a whole.  On the plus side, I do hear a lot of music in Frequency Unknown that I honestly can say I like.  There are a lot of really cool riffs and solo, and I enjoy many of the record's more atmospheric moments, but very few of these songs actually sound like complete, finished compositions, and more like early demos.  Overall, a lot of cool stuff going on in FU, but not really put together all that well.

Good Gods, Tate sounds absolutely abominable on this thing.  There are some songs, like the a fore mentioned Cold, where he sounds almost decent in the verses, singing in a very limited low register range, but anytime he goes for those bigger high notes, his voice becomes strained.  His lack of dynamics kills off any tension or emotion his vocal melodies could possibly convey.  Each and every chorus on this album just sounds flat and weak, and it is all completely Geoff's fault (as a side note, I was listening to Everything while typing this paragraph, and that song is a perfect example of this issue.  Up until it reaches the chorus, the track has a lot of promise, but Geoff's lackluster performance on the chorus just kills it.) Beyond that, his vocals just sit on top of the music in many of the tracks.  At no point did I ever feel like Geoff was actually singing with the band.  Rather, it feels like he is just singing over some pre-recorded instrumental tracks.  In fact, his vocals in certain areas just sound so disconnected and unrelated to the music,  there are certain times where I find myself wondering if he even listened to any of the music to which he was singing along.   I'm not even going to go into any detail about the re-records.  Suffice to say, they suck, badly, and only serve to prove how far Geoff has fallen as a vocalist.

So, in conclusion, Frequency Unknown is, despite many redeeming elements, as a whole, not a good record.  It had a lot of potential, but all too often that potential is wasted on arbitrary and inconsistent song structures, and then subsequently killed by Geoff's horrendous voice.  For the structural issues, I would probably blame the fact that this album was undoubtedly rushed out so that Geoff would be the first to have a "Queensryche" record out in 2013.  As I mentioned above, many of the tracks sound like rough demos, and could have benefited from second and third looks.  The music itself is solid, but it is put together so poorly that each track sounds like a medley of multiple songs rather than a singular piece.  As for Geoff, I have to ask this question:  Geoff, if this is the best you can do, if this is the shape of your voice these days, and this is as much effort you a willing to put into making a record, then honestly, what is the point of even remaining in the music business?  Your vocals sound lazy and uninspired and make it very obvious that you clearly just don't give a shit anymore about making music.  So why even bother with this embarrassing and, what I'm sure must be very financially draining struggle over the Queensryche name?  Is your ego really so bloated that you cannot see what has become of yourself?  All I can say is that if you really feel that you, and only you, are Queensryche, and that you, and only you, deserve ownership of the name, then fucking sound like it!!!!.  But don't give us this crap with adolescent lyrics, half-assed vocal melodies, and your strained, cracking, decimated voice.  If you actually took care of yourself and your instrument, and actually put some real effort into your music, then I could maybe at least respect your stance on the QR name issue, even if I disagree.  If FU is truly reflective of how much effort you are willing to put into making a Queensryche record, then I can honestly say, as a fan, you are unworthy of the QR name, and the legacy it carries.

[Phoenix87x]

I don't know if this has been posted yet, but one of my FB friends posted it today, it's a fan video of Tate's QR hacking their way through "The Mission"


https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4eyIIoUfaxc

Oh man, that is atrocious, and I'm not just talking about GT's voice. The rest of the band is way sloppy and off time.

[Phantasmatron]

I don't know if this has been posted yet, but one of my FB friends posted it today, it's a fan video of Tate's QR hacking their way through "The Mission"


https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4eyIIoUfaxc

Good job, Geoff. 

Because if you shy away from the big notes, flatten all the melodies to fit your narrowed range and make every note staccato to accommodate your diminished lung capacity, nobody will notice how much you suck.

[wolfking]

Sounds like I might dig some of these songs thanks to the solos, but with the guests, that's to be expected.

Might have a listen after work.

[Lowdz]

Sounds like I might dig some of these songs thanks to the solos, but with the guests, that's to be expected.

Might have a listen after work.

Solos didn't really stand out to me on first listen tbh.

[MoraWintersoul]

Whenever I watch Kelly Gray he reminds me of a quote from one of my favourite tv programmes.

"Not my fault. Monkey bastard hands!"

[Zook]

You've probably seen this but I can't believe Taint's attitude:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d88du2GnAus

I'm not much of a Queensryche fan but I have their hits and Mindcrime and I know the players and the drama.  Truly pathetic.

I don't know if this has been posted yet, but one of my FB friends posted it today, it's a fan video of Tate's QR hacking their way through "The Mission"


https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4eyIIoUfaxc

OK, that was fucking awful.

[wolfking]

Sounds like I might dig some of these songs thanks to the solos, but with the guests, that's to be expected.

Might have a listen after work.

Solos didn't really stand out to me on first listen tbh.

Oh. 

[Zook]

After 30+ years of music making, most bands are content to simply trudge along, putting out the same old type of album again and again, trying to recapture the glory of days past. Not this band, not Queensrÿche. With every new release, Geoff Tate and company push themselves into new directions, new sounds, and dizzying new heights. The result is that Queensrÿche is just as vital and musically relevant today as they ever were. Even when they revisit older ideas, as they did in 2006 with the long awaited sequel to Operation: Mindcrime, the result was one of the most thrilling releases of their extraordinary career. Now, a new chapter is about to be written, a new album, and a new line-up that unites frontman Tate with a stellar group of new players and seasoned vets. Arguably the heaviest version of Queensrÿche ever assembled, the band not only wrote and recorded the 10 brand new songs on Frequency Unknown, but also will be hitting the road to perform the entire Operation: Mindcrime album at select venues across the nation in celebration of that album’s 25th anniversary. Make no mistake about it, Queensrÿche is still a musical force to be reckoned with and their legions of fans will undoubtedly be celebrating in 2013!

lol

[jammindude]

After 30+ years of music making, most bands are content to simply trudge along, putting out the same old type of album again and again, trying to recapture the glory of days past. Not this band, not Queensrÿche. With every new release, Geoff Tate and company push themselves into new directions, new sounds, and dizzying new heights. The result is that Queensrÿche is just as vital and musically relevant today as they ever were. Even when they revisit older ideas, as they did in 2006 with the long awaited sequel to Operation: Mindcrime, the result was one of the most thrilling releases of their extraordinary career. Now, a new chapter is about to be written, a new album, and a new line-up that unites frontman Tate with a stellar group of new players and seasoned vets. Arguably the heaviest version of Queensrÿche ever assembled, the band not only wrote and recorded the 10 brand new songs on Frequency Unknown, but also will be hitting the road to perform the entire Operation: Mindcrime album at select venues across the nation in celebration of that album’s 25th anniversary. Make no mistake about it, Queensrÿche is still a musical force to be reckoned with and their legions of fans will undoubtedly be celebrating in 2013!

lol

 

OMG, I cannot stop laughing.   Where is this from?   *NO WAY* this is an outsider review.    Did Susan write this?

[Zook]

It's from the Soundcloud site where the full album can be streamed.

[wolfking]

After 30+ years of music making, most bands are content to simply trudge along, putting out the same old type of album again and again, trying to recapture the glory of days past. Not this band, not Queensrÿche. With every new release, Geoff Tate and company push themselves into new directions, new sounds, and dizzying new heights. The result is that Queensrÿche is just as vital and musically relevant today as they ever were. Even when they revisit older ideas, as they did in 2006 with the long awaited sequel to Operation: Mindcrime, the result was one of the most thrilling releases of their extraordinary career. Now, a new chapter is about to be written, a new album, and a new line-up that unites frontman Tate with a stellar group of new players and seasoned vets. Arguably the heaviest version of Queensrÿche ever assembled, the band not only wrote and recorded the 10 brand new songs on Frequency Unknown, but also will be hitting the road to perform the entire Operation: Mindcrime album at select venues across the nation in celebration of that album’s 25th anniversary. Make no mistake about it, Queensrÿche is still a musical force to be reckoned with and their legions of fans will undoubtedly be celebrating in 2013!

lol

is this from a fan, or is this an official press release?

It's from the Soundcloud site where the full album can be streamed.

So a punter posted this?

[Zook]

I don't know what a punter is, but it's in the description. I think it might be by Cleopatra Records as the copyright info is at the bottom of the description.

[wolfking]

A punter means fan, like you an me.

But yeah, it's gotta be from the record company.