Queensrÿche
Promised Land

A masterpiece the size of “Operation: Mindcrime” has certainly granted (deservedly) artistic immortality to Geoff Tate and company, but it is impossible to deny that over time, that chapter, essential for the evolutions of the entire progressive metal universe, has ended up being a loud pain in the ass even for a great band like Queensryche.

And so every subsequent release from the five from Seattle will inevitably have to reckon with the album that consecrated them and launched them into the upper echelons of the most intelligent and refined metal: an inheritance too heavy, even for a talented and superb band like the one we are talking about.

However, if there is an album that, in my opinion, does not fear comparison with the Operation, it is certainly this “Promised Land”, definitely less popular than the illustrious predecessor, but no less inspired and rich with creative cues and winning insights.

It is 1994 and Queensryche decide to free themselves from the alluring and blatantly commercial sounds that characterized the good, though not monumental, “Empire”, to embark on a challenging path, difficult (perhaps impossible) to emulate.

“Promised Land” is the album that many have tried to remake, the album that Dream Theater wouldn't even dream of, the album that has been approached but not reached by many illustrious names in thoughtful metal, and off the top of my head, I think of Fates Warning with “A Pleasant Shade of Grey”, Nevermore with “Dreaming Neon Black”, and Pain of Salvation with “Remedy Lane”.

But what does “Promised Land” have over all the rest of engaged metal?

In “Promised Land”, first of all, Pink Floyd cease to exist as a citation but survive, dissolved, in the unmistakable language of the Seattle ensemble, as cohesive and aligned as never before. The album's coordinates should thus be sought no longer in the vast cauldron of classic heavy metal but between a “The Wall” and a “The Final Cut”. Never before, we could say, has any metal managed to better capture the soul of the late Pink Floyd (where bands like Voivod and Tiamat, in the same years, preferred to rediscover the psychedelic origins of the glorious English formation). Never before, we could conclude, has a metal album managed to probe so deeply into the abyss of the human soul; never has it managed to take on such hidden psychological dimensions; never to capture existential nuances so difficult to handle.

“Promised Land” is a concept-non concept, where no story is told, where no narrative plot is followed: “Promised Land” is a cynical reflection on the meaning of life. And paradigmatic, in this respect, is the brief incipit “9:28 A.M.”, where the prolonged beep of a flatlined ECG is coupled with the wail of a newborn.

Without grandiosity, the American band will turn its murky spotlight towards the themes of marginalization and the unfathomable abyss that separates the Real Self from the Ideal Self: marginalized from society, from mental health, from family, from prevailing cultural dictates, from oneself. The dense and muddy colors that characterize the cover (which once again features the band's fascinating logo) well represent that sense of alienation, failure, impiety, and irreparable loss that the album's gloomy atmospheres intend to evoke.

Such is the conceptual cohesion that fuses the various pieces of the mosaic, that there is no need to resort to the device of the dominant musical theme to be taken up and reproduced throughout the album; or, worse still, of the theme that opens and closes the journey (a device simplistically used by most who attempt to build a concept album). Nor is it necessary to blend the tracks together, as a few seconds of silence cannot interrupt the emotional flow that runs through the entire work (although here and there some tracks remain physically connected to each other, excellently I would add, and not in a forced manner).

In conclusion, we find a band at the peak of its cohesion: the five musicians are on familiar terms with their respective instruments, preferring, however, not to indulge in sterile baroquism, but to search and build a reasoned path tending towards the minimal, as if they had proceeded by subtraction, progressively pruning and trimming everything they deemed superfluous.

This, in this case, does not rhyme with monotony or contrived homogeneity. For this reason, we are not surprised if, just after the intro, the album explodes with the crackling electricity of a Zeppelin-like track such as “I Am I”, then progresses with the heaviness of modern metal in “Damaged”, to finally be mellowed in two intense ballads with a vague Floydian flavor, “Out of Mind” and “The Bridge” (placed one after the other – another unusual element in metal, which generally conceives the atmospheric track as a legitimate moment of pause to catch one's breath).

A special shout-out to Eddie Jackson's precious bass work, rough and rocky in the hard tracks, fluid and elastic in the slow ones: listen to it, for example, as it dialogues with the poignant guitar solos of the always great De Garmo, Gilmour-like more than ever, in the intense interlude of the previously mentioned “Out of Mind”.

The title track represents the emotional peak of the album, as well as the most cynically abyssal moment: a bitter inner dialogue dominated by a sense of existential defeat, a sensation admirably rendered by the theatrical interpretation of a Geoff Tate we love to imagine slumped on a polished counter pouring himself one drink after another. Tate (and how could it be otherwise?) is the absolute protagonist of the album, but in this moment, Our Man surpasses himself, ending up paying tribute to the anguishing flair of existential discomfort masters like Roger Waters and Peter Hammill. The finale of the piece, with its macabre funeral march, stands out, fading into the nocturnal chaos of a bar, among people's voices, a wailing sax, and Tate's delirious cries, until a door creaks shut, and the track finds comfort in the night's tranquility, in the sad song of crickets, in the rustle of steps sinking into gravel.

The second part of the album inevitably suffers from a physiological drop in tension, even if the metro-like “Disconnected”, opened by soft electronic bases and animated by Tate's bleak recitation, pleases for its vaguely funky experimentation, while the orchestral (and better orchestrated) “Lady Jane” is a formal masterpiece, capable of revealing an unsuspected Beatles-like soul.

Liking less is the doublet of “My Global Mind” and “One More Time”, which rediscovers the typical old-school Queensryche sound, now decidedly out of place considering the context.

What lifts the fortunes of it all just in time is the closing “Someone Else?”, another moment of great emotional intensity, where Tate is left alone at his piano: a poignant ballad that closes the album on a note of doubt and questions that are hard to answer. A bruised, emaciated, great question mark.

The departure of the fundamental De Garmo, alas, will be a hard blow for the band's fortunes which, at the peak of their creativity, will seem to lose their bearings (but not the desire to experiment!), landing in the unfortunate grunge-tinged sound of an album like “Hear in the New Frontier”, an expression of an incipient identity crisis and all the difficulties of a band that, born and raised in the eighties, will find itself facing a world (musical and otherwise) now (terribly) changed.

This is life... and don't take it badly if I didn't bother with the dots of the umlaut on the Y, I just can't digest them, a bit like the double capital M of MayheM...