Queensrÿche
Digital Noise Alliance

For Queensrÿche, it was enough to part ways with their long-time singer to regain popularity, transforming from a finished band that had been disparaged for years into a grand band once again. Not exactly for me, since 2013 I have consistently gone against the tide, staunchly defending their work post-"Promised Land", highlighting and rewarding the band's desire to reinvent themselves even at the cost of not being appreciated, criticizing but not overly the recent direction the band took in choosing to settle into comfortable and less risky sounds, resulting in extended repetitiveness. Indeed, if we analyze what Queensrÿche has done so far with Todd La Torre, we can only acknowledge that they have settled comfortably into their traditional hard’n’heavy (sometimes more heavy metal and other times more hard rock) with few real progressive influences (I reiterate that the band's affinity for the genre is very dubious and accepted with a healthy degree of skepticism), with a solid and brilliant sound but now overused and repetitive.

However, something in this "Digital Noise Alliance" changes. The overall sound remains the same, still the usual powerful hard’n’heavy, still with the usual rocky riffs and absolutely clear production, but there's a good handful of tracks that can capture attention, without bringing about a revolution. I found at least 5 that deserve highlighting. For example, "Behind the Walls", where besides some good guitar scales, we find completely unusual synth interludes for the band. Then there's perhaps the most progressive track of the entire combo from Bellevue's production, "Tormentum", seven minutes with continuous rhythm changes, faster moments and slower, even relaxed and gloomy ones, typically prog passages and even choral backgrounds with a gothic aftertaste, a track that almost brings them into true prog-metal, a dynamic that's certainly unusual and unexpected. Another jewel is the ballad "Forest", clean and intense, with light and precise guitars, airy keyboard backgrounds, and precise string sounds; it’s the masterpiece you don't expect, at first listen, it really made me scream miracle and hope for a great album, I can only add that it has nothing to envy from ballads of their best years like "Silent Lucidity" or "Bridge". Another well-constructed track is "Hold On", characterized by beautiful slow moments and still rather elaborate rhythmic inserts that somehow betray the band's prog intentions. However, what really caught my attention was the final bonus track, a cover of Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell". I must admit that until I started writing this review, I didn't know it was a bonus track or that it was a cover, I must say it left me a bit dumbfounded, given that (probably I've already said it several times) I'm not a fan of either. How many times have we fallen in love with a song only to be stunned to discover it was a cover (think of "Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door" redone by Guns’n’Roses), it wouldn't be a bad idea to make it a legal international requirement to specify it in official tracklists, for transparency reasons... I felt a bit let down knowing it (even though with certain clues I should have had a strange suspicion…) because it's something different for Queensrÿche, it was rather strange to hear such a surprisingly sparkling track from them, with those synthesizers in the foreground and that updated '80s mood.

This handful of particularly bold and inspired tracks led me to a question: what masterpiece would we have had if they had dared throughout the whole album like this? All in all, though, we can't complain about the rest, it may be ordinary without major surprises, but everything seems much sharper than usual, with an extra gear compared to previous works. Interesting and moderately elaborate passages, for example, can also be found in "In Extremis", "Out of the Black" alternates very well rocky and granitic riffs with darker parts, and its power is unprecedented, then surprises with the perfect melancholy of "Lost in Sorrow", where hard guitars blend very well with the keyboard backgrounds and the rather gray atmospheres.

Undoubtedly the best of the La Torre era, a record full of well-transformed energy, not a revolutionary album but capable of reserving a few small surprises and delivering at full power what one expects from the brand.