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Are you familiar with the giant signs that American teenagers stick on their bedroom doors, "DO NOT ENTER"?
Well, I've always thought that replacing the word "enter" with "listen" would be a good way to keep people away from certain undeserving albums, like a sticker to print on them. Not necessarily bad records, but albums that inevitably make you think "Damn, they were definitely better before. Why wasn't I born in those years!"
Then, perhaps one thinks, people change, our idols are never what we think they are. Beautiful, talented, generous, and approachable, not at all. When I heard about the split of Queensryche with Geoff Tate in 2012, and read (and saw) all the not-so-democratic actions of the latter in the group, let's just say you start to realize that sometimes it's true that you should never meet your idols. Not to mention that inspiration within 'Ryche had almost disappeared for nearly a decade, to be generous, a decline that managed to produce albums like the anonymous "American Soldier", the questionable "Operation: Mindcrime II", or the horrible "Dedicated To Chaos". That Tate had taken the compositional and musical reins of the band in a somewhat dictatorial way after Degarmo's departure is no surprise, but thinking that the mentioned albums were made by the same band that between '84 and '94 composed records like the futuristic "Rage For Order", for example, makes you ponder.
And what could be the worst choice to make after being kicked out of your group where you've played for almost thirty years? Being overwhelmed by frustration, going into the recording studio and quickly composing an album to not be forgotten, and also to rub it in the face of your former bandmates. And so in 2013, "Frequency Unknown" sees the light, theoretically released under the name Queensryche since the lawsuit over the use of the name was still active at the time. With a cover that suggests a direct "Fuck You", the expectations cannot be the best.
Tate tries in every way to resurrect the past with most of the tracks, attempting a more modern approach, an approach that had brought success in the past, as in "Rage For Order", but verging on the ridiculous in this case. Mind you, the voice, though aged, is still there, but it's precisely the disinterest in singing the songs that bores the listener. I was talking about modernity, and an example is "Dare", with a riff that's reminiscent of something already heard and songwriting not worth mentioning. It goes better with simple but effective tracks like "Cold" or "Life Without You", the former based on a mid-tempo that bursts into a nice chorus, while the latter seems to finally return to give expressiveness to Tate's voice. Unfortunately, we're soon back to anonymity, with short-duration songs that seem to last forever in their lackluster nature, like "Fallen", "Running Backwards", or "Slave". Constant quality fluctuations are the main problem of this album. Proof of this is "In The Hands Of God", a track that doesn't even seem composed by Tate given how it revives the mood of the album, yet contrasted by the void of "The Weight Of The World". If I were to talk about the production, I’d use two words: cold and suffocating. The guitars lack any power, except in some flashes on the first tracks, while the sound of the drums is almost entirely drowned out by Tate’s voice. Total imbalance.
I believe one of the biggest problems of this record is the desire to reconnect with the past, trying (in vain) to emulate it. The dilemma is just one, though, we are no longer in the '90s, and a track like "The Weight Of The World" will never be like "Someone Else". A few months later, the original Queensryche, if we want to use this term, will release "Queensryche" with former Crimson Glory singer Todd La Torre replacing Tate. Personally, I found much more inspiration in this record compared to "Frequency Unknown", a greater desire to detach from the past without changing too much, and above all, a great desire to start over. Geoff Tate, on the other hand, must have left this desire to start over somewhere.
Celebratory tours for the 30 years of "Operation: Mindcrime", and there will be another one for the 30 years of "Empire" in 2020. By now, when ideas are zero, there is little to do, celebrating the past while hiding the meagerness of the present. . Unfortunately, that's not the solution.
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