Location: Vienna (Wien) / Szene / Austria
Date: Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Queensrÿche are a band that has kicked up a lot of dust in the metal world over the past few years. In 2011 they put out the controversial album “Dedicated To Chaos,” a move far away from their signature sound that also managed to split the fans in two. But the divide didn’t only run through their listeners, it ran through the very core of the band. Midway through last year, Queensrÿche kicked longtime frontman Geoff Tate out, and the war dance could begin. Airing dirty laundry in public and dragging each other through the courts over the right to use the band’s name became a daily routine, and the cherry on top came in early summer, when both sides released their own new studio album under the name Queensrÿche.
Even though the band’s name lost a lot of its shine, it was clear from the start that the loyal crowd was leaning toward the “original Queensrÿche,” meaning the backbone of the band: guitarists Michael Wilton and Parker Lundgren, bassist Eddie Jackson, and drummer Scott Rockenfield. The man who joined the four up front as lead screamer was none other than Todd La Torre, a guy who had spent years making noise in the Florida underground until another cult prog metal act, Crimson Glory, finally discovered him and recruited him a few years ago. Their inactivity then drove La Torre into the Queensrÿche camp, where they first announced the birth of a project called Rising West, but ended up carrying on under their famous brand name after all. If Tate is the embodiment of new ideas and a new sound, La Torre’s version of the band has been aiming for a return to the classic Queensrÿche years the whole time. They released a self-titled “comeback” album (review here) and started playing shows made up exclusively of songs from the first decade of their career.
In the fall of 2013, that path led them to Europe as well. You could tell from a mile away that the violent upheavals inside the band had hurt its name, and the catastrophic ticket sales for the originally announced show in Graz forced the promoter to move the location of the tour stop closest to us. The small Slovenian crew had no choice but to redirect to Vienna too, even though not more than maybe two hundred fifty, three hundred at most, showed up there either. Looking at the sad sight of the tiny hall at the Szene club, I had to pinch myself twice and ask whether this was really the same band I’d watched as one of the day’s headliners on the main stage of the prestigious Sweden Rock festival just two years earlier??
Around 8:30 p.m., the night was kicked off by Manic Saint, a local quintet that’s still looking for its place in the sun. Despite little time on the road, the locals came across as a solid stage act, with the frontman often venturing right to the edge of the stage and pouring the band’s energy out into the club. Let’s be honest, though, even Slovenia has more interesting heavy metal outfits than Manic Saint. Clichéd riffs and the thousand-and-first rehash of the new wave of British heavy metal sound just aren’t the kind of ingredients that send a random listener into ecstasy.
By the time darkness had settled over Vienna, the club had filled up at least somewhat, enough that there was no longer an empty gap right behind the first rows. Just like the turnout, the stage setup was modest too: only the band’s logo shyly stretched out above the drum kit, so any random passerby would have had a hard time believing this band once filled huge arenas.
Opening with Queen of the Reich showed that the guys on stage meant business! Queensrÿche took us three decades back in our minds, and in the opening stretch all eyes were glued in disbelief on frontman Todd La Torre, who squeezed incredible vocal acrobatics out of his throat, a hair’s breadth from Tate’s! Even though he’s already forty, La Torre looks youthful and playful on stage, and his main weapon is of course that sky-high voice, which is why even the most demanding songs, like Walk in the Shadows or Warning, could come to life in flawless form. Even though he’s the new guy in the band, Queensrÿche trust him enormously as their central stage figure. The instrumental four left all the levers of crowd interaction to the frontman, and every single bit of banter between songs was exclusively his domain, which is definitely unusual compared with other bands in similar situations. A sharp eye couldn’t miss La Torre’s new tattoo on his right arm, where, as a longtime fan of the band, he had the Queensrÿche logo inked. Even though they haven’t known each other long, the trust between the band and La Torre is clearly solid and mutual.
The other four, especially the original trio of Wilton / Jackson / Rockenfield, seemed like they’d had a weight lifted off their shoulders! I won’t claim they left every last atom of energy on the stage, since there was a certain routine reserve, but they came across as incredibly relaxed and unburdened, as if it were just another everyday rehearsal. They know each other better than the contents of their own pockets, so the tightness was outstanding. The only thing that occasionally kept them from reaching their full potential was the backing vocals of the Jackson / Lundgren duo on the right side of the stage.
Midway through the show, the two guitarists traded some fire back and forth before Queensrÿche shifted into fifth gear with the epic, chorus-driven The Needle Lies. Even though songs from the current record “Queensrÿche” like X2, Where Dreams Go to Die, or A World Without aren’t bad at all, the reactions made it clear the crowd had come for a dose of old-school classics! The album “Warning” (1984) was very well represented throughout the set, and for the very end of the main set the Americans naturally saved the best. The build-up of atmosphere over the night peaked with the closing part of the concept album “Operation Mindcrime” (1988), the epic My Empty Room / Eyes of a Stranger, which visibly moved even La Torre himself, who probably still hasn’t quite grasped that he’s standing in the spot of what, by its artistic merit, is one of the most respected heavy metal acts in history. Coming back for the encore, the Americans served up the commercial hits Jet City Woman and Silent Lucidity, before the curtain finally fell on yet another phenomenal La Torre performance in Take Hold of the Flame.
From a good hour and a half of hanging out, we got exactly what we expected: an outstanding performance of old-school material that Queensrÿche fans, let’s be honest, have been craving something fierce in recent years. Despite all the highlights and the excellent live form, though, the question arises of what the band’s future could even look like. Without the once-central creative tandem of DeGarmo / Tate, Queensrÿche are permanently handicapped, so a renewed rise in popularity is more fiction than anything else at this point. The band is thus doomed to reviving memories of the days when they were writing metal history, and anything beyond that simply won’t ever (again) happen without Tate as frontman.
author: Urban Bolta
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist QUEENSRYCHE:
1. Queen of the Reich
2. Speak
3. Walk in the Shadows
4. The Whisper
5. En Force
6. Child of Fire
7. Warning
8. Where Dreams Go to Die
9. A World Without
10. Guitar Solo
11. The Needle Lies
12. Prophecy
13. Fallout
14. My Empty Room
15. Eyes of a Stranger
16. Empire
—encore—-
17. Jet City Woman
18. Silent Lucidity (not played)
19. Take Hold of the Flame
MANIAC SAINT:
1. The Parasite
2. Believe
3. Resolution
4. Sanguine
5. Angel
6. Between the Lines
7. Rocka Rolla
8. Promised Land
