Thursday, June 20, 2013

Queensryche - self titled (with Todd La Torre)

4 hours 19 minutes in. Time to talk about something new.

Now, we all know about the trainwreck that was Frequency Unknown. Geoff Tate rushed with some folks to put out an album with the initials of F.U., a purely juvenile concept that he probably came up with while crying or something.

"F YOU GUYS!!!! Wait....that's it!"

Yeah, it probably went a little something like that. If it didn't, it did now.

So Frequency Unknown was rushed to death, suffered from bad mixing that needed to be "remixed", like that was going to save that tired piece of boredom rock blandness, and was released a few months ago, like Geoff was going to get brownie points in court because his version of Queensryche released something first. Yeah, Geoff, every human on Earth is also 8 years old.

Conversely, the remainder of the artist-formerly-known-collectively-as-Queensryche-and-still-is-called-Queensryche recruited Todd La Torre and carefully penned their first album since the split. This effort is completely organic in nature, with no outside influences at the pen, making it the first pure Queensryche album in years. It also brings with it a new form of fear. Sure, we know the other members of 'Ryche are capable musicians, but the fear comes from wretched misuse over the years. Sometimes those recycled riffs stored on hard drives over the years have the tendency of showing their age and almost seem outdated before lyrical pen hits paper. Once again, though, this version of the band showed a little dignity, and instead opted to go into the studio with nothing, and emerge with the first collective Queensryche album in seemingly an even longer time.

Queensryche releasing an album without outside influence or some bald, Rob Halford wannabe taking control like a playground bully? DAFUCKISDISSHIT?

Its awesome, that's what it is. Finally, the fans of this band have something to be really excited about. Except those who thought that Dedicated to Chaos was brilliant. But those folks are just wrong, anyway. If I listened to that release during 24 hours of reviewing, the event would be cancelled due to boredom and the desire to slip into a 10 hour coma. Yeah, we ain't calling this son-of-a-bitch at 14 hours, or 4.

The album itself will be best described during the review, of course, but as a teaser, I can tell you a few things.
1. Todd La Torre - think Geoff Tate, only not a douche, with his voice from the 80's and early 90's, and a shitload of fucking energy.
2. Remember Empire? If you forgot about that album, you'll be begging to hear "Jet City Woman" out of La Torre's pipes.
3. There's no ego here. No need to record versions of past 'Ryche classics to posture the idea that the album is "good." One problem with that: compared to Tate's murdering of classics he himself was a part of, I WANT TO HEAR LA TORRE SING THEM REALLY FUCKING BADLY.
4. Its short, it doesn't overstay its welcome or attempt to oversell itself. Its a dandy.

We're gonna talk more about this VERY soon, because 35:10 tends to go fast, especially when blogging during the listening process.

Tchort would look at that album length and laugh, saying, "Light of Day, Day of Darkness was one fucking song and almost two times as long.

But in the end he'd love this album more than Frequency Unknown. He'd say F.U. to Tate by using that piece of shit as a coaster. 

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