Category: reviews

Every band has to start somewhere. For prog-rockers Queensryche, they begin with a very NWOBHM-styled four-song EP. And it wasn’t even the same band initially – they were known as The Mob then, and Geoff Tate was enlisted to sign on the project, prior to him taking the full-time role as a frontman. The band recorded this release primarily as a demo, in a series of graveyard shift recording sessions at a local studio. They shopped it around with no avail, but when Kim and Diana Harris, owners of a Seattle record store, got a listen, they formed 206 records (206 being Seattle’s area code), managed the group, changed the band’s name, and released the demo as an EP in 1983. It got a huge following in Europe (thanks to Kerrang! magazine), and by the end of the year, the band signed on with EMI records and became a national act.

For as much as these four tracks don’t sound like Queensryche, they still do. The opener, “Queen of the Reich,” starts with Geoff Tate holding this impossibly long note in operatic style, and then launches into something similar to older Iron Maiden. The songs “Nightrider” and “Blinded” are structurally a bit more strange, and not straightforward rockers. The album finishes up with “The Lady Wore Black,” a slower tune that still rocks and shows the kind of direction the band wanted to go, with more progressive leanings and longer songs.

This is obviously a demo recorded by an unsigned band on a budget, and not an established act who is trying to explore their musicianship. It’s all very simple stuff here, without the extended set pieces, massive overdubs, or complicated introductions that the band would find later. The band clearly came from a NWOBHM background, with more influences in the metal area than any art-rock leanings. Even their photo resembles a band that probably plays Scorpions covers out of small bars in Federal Way, instead of the great prog-rock band that they later became.

For the longest time, if you bought this CD, it would come with “The Prophecy” as a bonus track, which is an excellent outtake from the Rage For Order sessions. With the later remaster, this EP now includes another seven live tracks, rescued from an old Warning-era live-in-Japan laserdisc that is no longer available. I’m an old fart with the older 5-song version (I actually had the tape, which repeated the same five songs on both sides), and I’ve always thought of the album as a good starting point for the band. I’m not sure what I’d think of the same release as a catch-all for a bunch of other stuff. It’s nice that they’ve added more bonus material, but for whatever reason, I like thinking of this as the same, little, 20-minute tape I got when I was first getting into the band.

Rating: 8

Some metalheads may remember guitarist Chris Poland as one of the original guitarists in the band Megadeth. He appeared on their first two albums before getting fired by Dave Mustaine for his excessive drug use. (And you know if your drug use is excessive compared to a mid-1980s Dave Mustaine, you’ve got some serious problems.) After getting clean, he did a brief stint as bassist in the Circle Jerks, and then came back to metal and did this solo album. He’s since done more work in the Jazz-fusion-y direction with his band Ohm.

This ten-track (or nine-track – if you have the first release on tape, it won’t have the track “Heinous Interruptus”) album is an all-instrumental attempt to showcase Poland’s playing with melodic guitar that alternates thick rhythm with a lot of weaved textures of fast leads and some occasional acoustic. He plays everything on the album, bass and guitars, with his brother Mark on the drums.

Even though Poland originally worked with a straightforward thrash band, all of the compositions here are more jazz-metal oriented, more similar to someone more Joe Satriani. The guitar work is very modal, but it does sport more screaming leads in places. Each song has very memorable structure, like in “The Fall of Babylon,” which starts with acoustic guitar, then builds for four minutes, occasionally dipping back to the unamplified guitar before he wraps it up and bookends again with the acoustic. “Row of Crows” starts with a romping riff that then pulls to very soaring guitar sounds, then speeds up the drums on the way out, like a car driving like a bat out of hell toward the horizon. Probably one of the best tracks is the ending, “Khazad Dum,” which starts off minor and almost sinister, and at the end, completely takes off with quick double-bass drum and an almost constant solo that leaps to the finish.

This is an extremely impressive little album. Like I said, it weighs in at only about 35 minutes, but it’s the kind of thing I always, immediately have to listen to a second time. The most amazing thing about this album is that I found it as a cut-out in a dollar store in 1993, and for the longest time, I heard absolutely nothing else about it. Right after it came out, Enigma records went under, which effectively buried the album, There was a CD reissue in 1998, and a new reissue in 2002 with two extra tracks. They also released a live version of the album in 2007, originally recorded on a truncated 1991 live tour. I think people on the internet have spread the word on this little gem, though. It’s well worth finding, although I usually skip the bonus tracks and go for just the original stuff I found so awe-striking back when I first heard this.

Rating: 9

I’m surprised I didn’t throw this album out a long time ago. I’m not saying that it’s that repulsive, I’m just saying that it never really clicked with me, and it went away in a box for a long time, until recently, when it popped into my head and I had to dig it out of storage to give it another listen. Then I had to get on google and see exactly why I ever had a copy of the record in the first place.

Here’s the deal. There was this contemporary christian artist called Steve Taylor who had a decent solo career but pissed some people off for making fun of the jesus types a bit, including a song called “I Blew Up the Clinic Real Good.” This was followed by a band called Chagall Guevara that’s best-described as CCM alt-rock, and their debut had some degree of mainstream crossover success. When label MCA did their annual juggling of the bands, CG faltered and split. Taylor went on to discover and produce Sixpence None the Richer, and that’s where his story ends very happily, but it’s where Passafist’s story begins.

Chagall Guevara guitarists Lynn Nichols and Dave Perkins reinvented themselves as the Caruso Twins, Waco and Reno, and picked up John Elliott of Dessau, a Nitzer Ebb-like dance/industrial band, and two members of the band Afrikan Dreamland. This is one of those combinations that could only work in a city like Nashville, filled with session players with lots of time on their hands and numbers in their rolodexes. The group somehow got a contract, and did this one-shot studio album, somehow capturing a brief sample of 1994, while also proving what kind of strange albums get made when semi-famous people from other bands somehow roll the dice correctly and get a chance to go into the studio.

The easiest way to describe this seven-track LP, aside from the staple “alternative,” would be to call it a very studio-sterile industrial, taking every possible approach to be as widely liked by as many people as possible. It seems like they wanted an album that would go to dance floors, but maybe yield a single, but get picked up by some people just cruising the CMJ for good college rock, but not offend the CCM crowd and possibly get a few purchases from old Chagall Guevara fans. That ultimately means the album is so soft and pliable, I’m not sure anyone could like it.

There are a lot of obvious tongue-in-cheek religious or social awareness issues painted across this album like ketchup on a four-year-old’s plate. Even the band name – Passafist – well, I’m not going to explain it, it’s so stupid. There’s a song called “Glock” that’s about guns. “Christ of the Nuclear Age” is like some kind of REM-like jolly singing, a quick departure from all of those electric drums and Skinny Puppy posturing on the other songs. All lyrics are heavily basted in effects processing, with the Korn-like “singing through a bullhorn” used frequently. Guitars are all over the songs, but more rhythmic than metallic. They even cover the Stones song “Street Fighting Man,” in a very pathetic way. Most of their songs sound like if Nokia or Ford or Revlon were making a commercial and needed “Street Fighting Man,” but couldn’t pay the Rolling Stones, so they got Anonymous Studio Band #57 to re-record the song, and a producer said “Make it edgier! we need to sell these cars to kids!” Add that to the fact that the seven songs here barely sound like they were recorded in the same genre, let alone by the same band, and you have a pretty uneven and unlistenable album.

The one song that is interesting closes up the album, and it’s called “The Dr. Is In.” It’s a ten-and-a-half minute song that’s based on and filled with samples from the dark comedy Doctor Strangelove, which is of course about nuclear war. At first, the song is very mellow, with slower drums, ebbing guitar, and almost spoken lyrics that sound like Roger Waters. It also uses an occasional chorus in the song, anonymously singing an “oooooh” here or there. It seriously sounds like some lost Pink Floyd song about nuclear war, maybe by the new ‘Floyd. It’s not bad, though. Then, as the “countdown” continues in the pseudo-concept song, the drums get more percussive, and it switches to more of the bullhorn lyrics, as the guitars get louder and frenetic. It all leads up to the big nuclear blast, and not a bad little song. It does beg the question as to why you’d write a song about nuclear war with the USSR a few years after the whole thing fell apart, but what can you do.

I don’t even know if you can get this album anymore, but even if someone handed it to you, it’s probably not worth more than a cursory scan of the first six tracks and a single listen of the last one. I enjoy listening to this only in that it’s one of those strange curiosities, like Crystal Pepsi or Laserdisc movies, that seemed like a really good time to an executive, and then he probably lost his job at the end of the year over it. I am glad I didn’t throw out this CD, but only because I’d still be trying to figure out who did “The Dr. Is In,” and I’d never find out.

Rating: 6 (but an 8 for the last song)

Look, I’ll start off the review by saying the obvious, and scaring off the 90% of you that just won’t get this album. First, this isn’t a Queensryche album. Second, it’s not even really a metal album. And if you best remember Tate as a guy racing through eight octaves of scales like an opera star on crystal meth, you aren’t going to like this at all. If any of these three things disturb you, go ahead and say “man, what a gyp,” and go back to downloading Dream Theater bootlegs.

Okay. In 2002, Queensryche lead singer Geoff Tate took a sidestep and decided to release this solo album on Sanctuary records. Instead of doing a prog-metal album with a different cast of musicians in his band, he decided to utilize his voice for a much more pop-oriented effort. That might sound quite crazy to some, but I can think of at least two good reasons for this. One is that he’s very talented and he could create something that would transcend the metal world and crack at all of the Peter Gabriels out there in the music world. The other reason is that Tate’s voice isn’t exactly as full-ranged as it was twenty years ago. You can notice this on Queensryche live albums where he really struggles with the older material. Yet, in the studio, he always finds a way to work around this and do “thicker” sounding things in lower registers that sound great, but aren’t the shrieking high-end opera wailing like the old albums. That’s the basic litmus test for this album: if you can enjoy the “newer” Geoff Tate vocals.

As I am not one of those “you must do it the exact same way your entire life and never change” metalheads, I welcome the change, and I found this album very interesting. The music here is much more laid-back than Queensryche, but Tate really takes the effort to try a few different things. Stuff like “Flood” almost sounds like it would belong on the new Peter Gabriel album, a slightly electronic backing with great vocals. That and “Forever” both sound like the kind of modern synth-pop song that makes a great single, and also lends itself to a good dance remix. “Helpless” goes into a more romantic sounding adult contemporary number, with Spanish guitar and sweeping choruses.

As far as the music, this is very much the type of contemporary arrangement with anonymous background players, lots of Pro-Tools, expert programming on the drum sounds and filling synths, and perfectly sculpted sound. There are no wailing guitar solos, thumping bass, or other metal-oriented dramatics. Imagine the sort of hit factories that turn out records for Alanis or any other FM superstar, and that’s where the mix here is aiming. And that’s not bad, because it’s got Geoff’s voice on top. He’s not breaking any wine glasses with his high register here, but damn, he is putting together such a smooth and complete sound here, that I’m surprised none of these songs ever broke out on the charts. It’s as if he’s been doing this all of his life, and somehow on a fluke ended up putting on some leather pants and fronting a prog-metal band for all of those years.

I should mention a few other songs on here that are relevant. The song “Every Move We Make” is a slower romantic number which is good, but it segues into “This Moment”, which is a great little ballad that sounds like it could have been sung 50 years ago by one of the crooner greats. “A Passenger” is one of my favorite songs, and almost sounds like it could have been a slower Queensryche song, or maybe something they would have done at the unplugged gig, because it’s got a mellower beat and a very smooth hook. “Off the TV” is the “radio” number, and the production and compressed verses of vocals sounds right for it; “Grain of Faith” is another poppier number that’s in the same vein. The two styles collide a bit for the closer “Over Me”, which is one of those songs with some power behind it, but it’s really talking about losing someone, so it’s not exactly happy, but that’s what you need to close up an album with a good punch.

Problems? There are a few. The album seems more like a grouping of eleven demos that were done in a sort of “see what I can do” fashion, like he was auditioning for a big label to pick him up. And because of that, there are little issues, like that some of the percussion was obviously dialed in on a synth or computer or whatever, like you’d do on a demo, before the drummer came in. Plus some tracks (like “Off the TV”) sound so much like a producer or studio tech said “this is what everyone wants, patch number 45A on ProTools, so let’s use that,” and I don’t entirely like when producers try to second-guess listeners like that – it’s a reason I don’t listen to adult contemporary all the time. There are also some continuity issues with all of these tracks, in that the album doesn’t flow as well as it could. Individual tracks are all great, but it’s a little hard to go through from end to end.

Overall, I like this. It’s one of those albums that didn’t take off, for all of the obvious reasons, but that I’ll always enjoy listening to. I know in ten years, nobody is going to know what the hell this is, but I’ll always go back to it and enjoy it.

Rating: 7.5

You know how now (with now being 2008), all of the major phone companies and wireless companies are merging together and buying each other out, so where before maybe you paid Southern Podunk Bell for your local line and ABC Wireless for your cell phone, and now you just make one check out to some huge monolith like Verizon? Well, basically the same thing was happening with prog-rock groups back in the mid-eighties, with all of the loose members of Yes and Genesis and Marillion and Asia and whatnot being all rolled together into big megagroups designed to succeed on the corporate level. GTR is an example of one of these prog-supergroup things. It’s also, unfortunately, a good example of how that doesn’t work, and indirectly, why Verizon is evil, but I’ll stick to the music part here and leave the phone company stuff for another forum.

Okay, so GTR was the meeting of Steve Howe (from Yes) and Steve Hackett (from Genesis), both guitar virtuosos. (Get it? GuiTaR -> GTR?) They got together with unknowns vocalist Max Bacon and bassist Phil Spalding, and session guy on drums Jonathan Mover. I’ll get the nice things out of the way first. This album went gold really fast, and a lot of people liked it, for about ten seconds, which dumbfounds me. I’m not saying that it’s total shit; I’m just saying it’s weird that they had a song get up to like #14 on the pop charts. That one song, “When the Heart Rules the Mind” had a lot of hook to it, but that’s it. Anything good you can say about this album is immediately negated by its problems.

As for problems, first of all, this album sounds like shit. Maybe this was before they learned to get that extra 7dB out of a CD or something, but seriously, it’s mixed together so compressed and tinny, that I seriously thought I got a defective one when I re-bought this recently. It sounds really bad. I’m sure the mixing is great, and if you listen to the original pressing vinyl or sat in a control room with the masters it would be like Dark Side of the Moon on a uranium disc. But the One Way reissue I have sounds so bad, it’s like you had a cheap tape and the felt thing inside the head part of the shell broke off.

Second, this is a classic example of “too many cooks,” because in every song, Steve Howe tries to totally bogart the sound stage with his weird Asian-sounding (no pun) scales and solos, and every once in a while, Hackett breaks in with his own weird style of noodling. They don’t alternate solos, and they don’t alternate songs; they just collide. I think if it was one or the other of them and just some lackey studio axe that laid down a steady rhythm, this would sound much more straightforward, especially if you’re going for the arenas, which these guys were. I think they spent all of their energy working back and forth against each other, and in the process, the band ended up being a low-quality clone of Asia. The other issue is that these guys basically just bent over and did every single thing their image people told them to do, as far as creating a totally homogenized 80s pop record. Both Hackett and Howe are talented guys, and I think if they would have been at a label that said FUCK MTV and fuck the radio and everything else, just get out those guitars and throw down as many notes as you can on the page in the coolest melody possible, they could have produced a completely kick-ass record. But, that isn’t what happened.

As far as the lyrics, I am not going to completely piss on Max Bacon, because I’m sure he just did what he was told so he wouldn’t get fired. Rumor has it he was so scared the whole thing wouldn’t work, he kept his day job as a milkman during the project. But I can’t not say anything about his delivery, because everything is sung very sweetly, and there’s no real breaks between phrases. I wish I could describe music theory a bit more to explain that, but imagine how someone in church choir would sing “haaaaalleeeeeeeiiiiillluuuuuuiiiiaaaaa” and then how someone in a punk band would sing “FUCK! THE! PIGS!” and compare the difference in phrasing. Maybe I’m thinking about this too much. Actually, I’m still thinking about who the fuck is still a milkman in this century. Do English people drink that god damn much milk?

I might also complain about the bass and drums, but you totally can’t hear them, at least on my CD. So good job, guys. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you were playing like motherfuckers and I just couldn’t hear you.

There are a couple of interesting spots on the record. First, Hackett recorded the song “Hackett to Bits,” a guitar solo number, from a solo album. I had that album (Highly Strung) and loved it, so the new version was a treat. The final track, “Imagining,” isn’t bad, either. Otherwise, it’s a pretty mediocre disc, with a couple of the tunes (“The Hunter,” particularly), being really bad.

The band toured for a year after this release and then self-imploded. (Hackett was the first to quit, followed by Mover.) It’s interesting to note that they have a few other music connections that they made as they were in their downward spiral. First, Robert Berry, who was in England working on the 3 album with Carl Palmer, was pulled in to songwrite and cover guitar, although he clashed with Max Bacon and caused more turmoil within the band. Also the drummer’s throne was briefly taken by Nigel Glockler of Saxon. The band recorded part of a second album, which was never officially released. Howe is allegedly sitting on the masters, but the songs appeared on bootlegs and are rumored to be out there on a Japanese release called Nerotrend. Also, derivatives of the songs appeared on the Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe album.

This is, unfortunately, one of those records that I remember really liking 20 years ago, when I bought up anything that was somehow related to Rush, Genesis, or Yes. I remember my friend Derik being completely mesmerized with this album, learning “When the Heart…” and playing it on drums all the time. For whatever reason, I seriously didn’t hear this album at all for two decades, and got excited when I saw the reissue on CD. Unfortunately, it totally didn’t hold up. It’s too bad, because I still love the old Steve Hackett solo material. Oh well.

Rating: 4

Dream Theater has never been known to show up at a gig, play the songs from the new album, throw in a few old numbers, and call it a night. Similar to Frank Zappa, they’ve always been known for having a large amount of material available to play at shows, and they’re known to mix things up a bit. That includes playing stuff that’s never been on an album before, including songs that will make it to disc in the future, and other bits that are just place-holders, or things that happen live just for the fans. Dream Theater is also a band that listens to fans, both in emails and from the mail that comes in to their fan club.

That’s where this EP came up. The guys were playing out this huge song called “A Change of Seasons,” a piece written for the album Awake, but at twenty-plus minutes, was considered too long by studio execs. Although the song was shelved, the band played it live several times, and it appeared on a few poorly-recorded bootlegs, becoming a thing of legend among DT fans. Tape traders and fan club members built up a fever pitch about the song, and when the band heard, they decided to go into the studio and record it properly for a release to EP.

The song itself is a seven-part, 23-minute epic, which alternates very skilled instrumental parts with actual lyrics which describe a man going through a cycle of life. He goes through innocence, darkness, paradise, blindness, and later wiseness. Most of the lyrics have to do with drummer Mike Portnoy and the loss of his mother. Although singer James LaBrie came onboard for the previous album, this song fits his smooth and operatic lyrics well, and further introduces him to the band. Also new to this CD is the addition of Derek Sherinian on keyboards. I honestly don’t think he did much on this album, and it wasn’t until the next full LP that he became more integrated into the band, but you can hear him here.

Okay, great 23-minute song and all, but this is actually a 57-minute EP, because the next four tracks come from a live set at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club. The band covers Elton John, Deep Purple, and Led Zeppelin in full-sized and fairly serious renditions, showing their influences but taking the guitars up a notch and making things sound much more prog-rock. They finish the album with a ten-minute medley of Pink Floyd, Kansas, Queen, Genesis, Journey, and the Dixie Dregs, all smashed together and played at full speed. It’s funny to hear LaBrie cheeze out a bit on “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin'”, while the band prepares to launch into the next cover in a millisecond.

This was the first time, to me, a band had ever done such an odd little record, and I loved it. Since then, Dream Theater have recorded a shitload of cover tunes, even playing entire albums like Metallica’s Master of Puppets live, and then releasing it on CD. That dilutes things a bit, and it introduces the paradox where bands releasing more and more things to their fans are making it harder and harder to be a fan, because you have to buy truckloads of rare CDs. But in 1995, when this came out, it really hit the spot, giving me something to play over and over until their next album came out. The cover songs are not infinitely replayable, but I still do like the title track, and love that a band could come out with an EP like this, instead of just recording a bunch of reworked B-sides and scattering them across all of their Japanese CD-singles.

Rating: 8

After the 1988 release of Operation: Mindcrime, Queensryche weren’t in a position to put on a lavish stage show or three-hour
headlining concert yet; in fact, they spent their time opening for Metallica on the epic …And Justice For All tour. (Unfortunately, they were only on the first leg of this tour; by the time I got to see Metallica supporting this album in the summer of 1989, we had to endure The Cult as an opener.) But after the huge success of 1990’s Empire, the band had enough clout to book an extensive headlining tour, which included all of the video screens needed to produce a show that could feature the rock-opera album in its entirety.

In October 1991, EMI released this limited-edition box set containing a CD (or cassette – remember those?) and VHS video of the entire Mindcrime album, performed live, along with a booklet and a box, of the “long” sort (for those of you old enough to remember CDs sold in long boxes.) This limited edition release could both be seen as a nice tribute to the fans, or a “why did they do that?” misstep, depending on how you look at it.

As far as the CD goes, it’s the entire Mindcrime album, exactly. Exactly. No extras, no bonus, no covers, just the album, and that’s it. The performance is pretty good, and it’s upbeat and doesn’t drag, plus Geoff Tate’s vocals are pretty good and aren’t scratched or busted, as they were on the latter half of this monstrously long tour. There are some issues with levels in places; sometimes, a sample from the album is too quiet or muddled, or a guitar isn’t as up-front as it may be on the album. I’m sure part of that problem is that I listened to Mindcrime about 20,000 times before I heard this album, so I tend to notice all of the little bits here and there.

The video is also exactly what’s on the album. They did a good job of having lots of cameras and many angles and stuff moving, which is decent. They also captured a lot of the video projection screens, and showed clips of the story as it’s going on. It’s not as good as watching all of the actual videos back-to-back, which are compiled together in another release, but it’s much more than just watching the band play live.

The problem? The band just came off their biggest tour ever, with all of these new songs on Empire, and all of the classic stuff from the older albums, and this box set captures only those exact songs on Mindcrime. No “Silent Lucidity,” no “Queen of the Reich,” no other tracks are added to the CD, either from the same massive 3-hour set from which this live album was removed, or from their b-sides or other catalogue. (If you were lucky enough to find the Japanese release, it came with “The Lady Wore Black” and “Roads to Madness” as bonus tracks.) If I was a new fan of the band, this would be a pretty bad purchase to make, unless I bought it specifically to find out more about the prior album. It also means there’s no real reason to listen to this CD when one can just listen to the far superior studio version. In fact, I don’t think, prior to this review, I’ve even cracked the case on my copy for a good six or seven years.

There’s also a big disconnect here as far as formats. The old version was a VHS and a CD (or tape). I never, ever watch old VHS anymore, so this thing sits in the case gathering dust. But if I wanted to listen to the CD or rip it to my iPod, it’s there. This was the only version available, and despite the fact that this was a “limited edition,” you could occasionally find a new copy in the back of a music store, five years later. (I think I got mine at a Wherehouse in 1997.) But they were hard to find, and in that pre-eBay world, it meant you either had to buy a boot, pay someone a hundred bucks for a used copy, or try every record store in a thousand-mile radius.

In 2001, when their record label was performing necrophilia on their back-catalogue, Capitol re-released this box set as a regular DVD. This means you don’t have a CD, which might not work in your car or when ripping the audio to your MP3 player. (Actually, they released the CD as a standalone also – but if you buy that, you don’t get the video.) But you have everything on a DVD, and they also added some bonus features, like an interview, some graphics and fan photos, and a few crumbs of nebulous information that might help you figure out the story, if you’re still struggling with who really killed Mary. I don’t know what the packaging or liner notes are like on this version, but if they are anything like the other reissues and box sets Capitol put out for the band’s other material, I’m guessing “shitty.”

But, I have the BOX SET which makes me more elite than you wankers who first got into the band in like 1999. Don’t worry, you’re not missing much. It’s a good collection, and a good intention, but I wish they would have released a 3-CD live album of the 1991 tour instead.

Rating: 7

This oddly-titled release is often bemoaned as being too “alternative” or “grunge” by many fair-weathered fans of the band, which is a pretty inaccurate comparison. This came at a time when many bands were cutting their long hair and trying to move out of the strictly-defined world of metal to survive, and bands from Metallica to Tori Amos were being called “grunge” or “like Soundgarden” by disgruntled purists. The funny thing is that this album was recorded in Nashville, and probably owes more to country, or at least the new alt-country sound of the era. And it’s also produced by Peter Collins, who desked Queensryche’s two most popular albums (Operation: Mindcrime and Empire) and is more of a direct connection to the band’s metal background than anything else.

One thing is true about this album: it was the last studio album to be recorded by the original lineup of the band; Chris DeGarmo split after this release. (Yes, I know he came back later, but that’s not really the same.) It’s pretty clear that there were differences within the band as this album came together, and its failure to be another Empire was probably just the gasoline dashed on the fire.

This isn’t a pseudo-concept album like Promised Land, and it isn’t aimed at that kind of niche listener, either. It starts out with
the slightly metal single “Sign of the Times,” and the album proceeds to trade off writing credits between singer Geoff Tate and guitarist Chris DeGarmo. The DeGarmo tracks are much more laid back and almost border on the kind of stuff you could see on the Country Music TV channel. Tate trades off with more socially-aware tracks like “spOOL,” which features lyrics like “Focus on a strategy to / open up our minds and then, / together… turn another turn.” It sounds like something Jefferson Airplane, but it rocks out well.

It’s worth noting to those who are interested in this (usually inept metal purists stuck in the past) – Geoff Tate can’t sing
anymore, or at least he can’t sing the crazy operatic stuff. He’s slowly lowered his ability to do this, a pack or two a day. To be
fair, he can sing, and he does it well, but he’s not going to do any of those breaking-glass shrieking howls anymore. And for the most part, that stuff’s been written out. “spOOL” is a good example of how he really tries to reach his old limits, but he can barely make it.

I’d hate to hear that song live at the end of a tour. (In fact ,they didn’t play this song live on this tour, although Tate did play it later when he was touring for his solo album.) The good news is that on this album, he has really started to write his stuff in a
slightly lower register, and his voice still has a great tone to it. But if you’re one of those “god damn it, he hit that high note 20
years ago, what the fuck” people, I don’t know what to tell you.

And I should give an obligatory mention to the one song that’s sung by Chris DeGarmo and not Tate. It’s “All I Want,” and it’s truly horrifying. It’s like the bad b-side to an Oasis single, and it’s in your best interest to program your CD player accordingly, or remove it from your iTunes playlist. The only thing interesting about this song is that I’m sure it came to be because of a major inter-band argument, and I could imagine DeGarmo pouting “I want to sing one song or I’m going to quit!” and then locking himself in a bathroom for four hours.

Going back to this album, it really reminds me of 1997 in a lot of ways. I mean, I did listen to it constantly back then, (except for
that “All I Want” song) and it’s just such a pleasant little mix of metal and a slightly more contemporary blend of pop. It came at a time when the whole grunge thing was long dead, but when metal was also completely slain by this alt-rock beast (or not). I remember at that time really stretching to find something new to listen to, because I was getting bored of just re-buying old metal albums, and I wasn’t about to cash in to the electronica craze or the Smashing Pumpkins or whatever the hell was going on at that moment. And for me, this album just sounded RIGHT. It was smooth, it wasn’t just a metallic collection of screaming solos, it had substance, but it wasn’t a giant rock opera or some pretentious format that would make me only listen to it twice a year. It was intensely enjoyable, and had unlimited repeat playability.

And of course, it was the last album before the group fell apart, and that’s my typical luck. In other bad luck, EMI, the band’s label, went bankrupt during the tour for this album.  The band financed the rest of the tour themselves, but I’m sure the financial strain and lack of label support for the album didn’t help tensions in the band.  (It also guaranteed a worthless box set and “best-of” album to get out of contractual obligations once the label was bought out of bankruptcy later.)

But despite the fact that everyone thought this album was “Queensryche meets Soundgarden” or some insipid nonsense like that, I really do enjoy this record, and I still do, over a decade later.

Rating: 9