Label: Rat Pak Records
Release date: February 5, 2021
Production: Tod La Torre & Craig Blackwell
Album length: 44.35 min
Genre: Heavy Metal
Rating: 9.0/10
Todd La Torre is an American musician who made his name over the last decade as the frontman of the legendary progressive metallers Queensryche, after a stint behind the mic for Crimson Glory before that. La Torre is a hell of a vocalist. He also plays several instruments, drums above all. And that’s not all: he writes his own music too. The album “Rejoice in the Suffering”, released at the start of this February, probably wouldn’t have seen the light of day if the world hadn’t been wrapped in the blanket of a pandemic. Queensryche had to put their live activities on ice, and La Torre got a free hand to finish his solo studio debut. The material was years in the making, and it shows: this is a seriously varied record that effectively fuses elements of traditional old-school American speed/heavy metal with modern sonic finesse.
On the album La Torre cuts loose vocally in all his glory and delivers a chameleon performance, switching between several singing approaches within a single song, as the sprawling, uncompromising opening assault Dogmata makes clear right away. Vanguards of the Dawn Wall, which hammers home some sharp social criticism, is, next to the opener, perhaps the most furious and rabid track on the record when it comes to sheer aggression, flirting heavily with the old-school barking speed metal of the early eighties in the US. Woven through all of it is a solid helping of musicality that goes along with the achievement, plus a dose of pomp, which makes its first appearance on the album with Darkened Majesty. La Torre’s vocals stay flawlessly, explosively aggressive. They’re backed up and harmonized with extra vocal lines, which cranks up the theatrical drama in the songs, and he also mixes in gang-style choral shouting, as heard especially in Vanguards of the Dawn Wall and the opening Dogmata. Critical Cynic, for one, is the moment on the album where, if you hadn’t figured it out already, it finally becomes clear why La Torre landed in Queensryche. Vexed, which counts as one of the most varied tracks, could also have lived happily on one of Queensryche’s more recent releases in some alternate universe. Overall, “Rejoice in the Suffering” is an album that plants no flowers, knows no sweetness and doesn’t flee into fantasy land. It’s a firmly grounded piece of work with strong singer-songwriter undertones, in which La Torre stands as an observer of reality as he personally perceives it, and preaches about it in his confessions. His voice has incredible breadth in the colors it paints with, and an astonishing range, carrying its developed power from octave to octave with ease. The closing vocal line in the final track Apology is especially brilliant.
La Torre sang all the vocals and played all the drums. But another musician played a key role on his debut: Craig Blackwell, who helped La Torre with the album’s production and played everything we haven’t listed yet. That means guitars (the riffs and all the solos), bass and keyboards. Clearly the pairing of the two is a perfect recipe for creating music that also serves up a good helping of wit and creative flexibility. It’s a vivid album that surprises with its string of left-field ideas. Combine the high-octane voltage of full-on metal galloping with all that variety, and the album as a whole flies by incredibly fast. It never steals the listener’s time.
With his solo studio debut, La Torre has delivered a musical manifesto that shows off his extraordinary talents in the best possible way. Not just as a vocalist, but as a songwriter. In many ways his debut – and this is honestly a shocking realization – is far more convincing than the current Queensryche album “Verdict” (2018), which leaves you with a feeling of incompleteness while you listen. “Rejoice in the Suffering” is a tightly polished, detailed piece of work that also pays attention to building a predatory, in-your-face, modern-sounding production.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
01. Dogmata
02. Pretenders
03. Hellbound and Down
04. Darkened Majesty
05. Crossroads to Insanity
06. Critical Cynic
07. Rejoice in the Suffering
08. Vexed
09. Vanguards of the Dawn Wall
10. Apology
bonus tracks;
11. Fractured
12, Set It Off
13. One By One
Lineup:
Todd La Torre – vocals, drums
Craig Blackwell – guitar, bass, keyboards
Guest musicians:
Jordan Ziff – guitar solo on track 7
Al Nunn – keyboards on track 13
