Label: Century Media Records
Production: Chris “Zeuss” Harris
Release date: October 2, 2015
Album length: 64.23 min
Genre: Art Metal
Queensryche are back with their second studio album since the band’s shipwreck during the messy split with original singer Geoff Tate. With its predecessor “Queensryche”, the first album without Tate on vocals, the band finally got to breathe again after almost twenty years. Breathe in the sense of real unity. They were finally rid of the dictator who told them which musical direction to follow. The album “Queensryche” was therefore a complete return to the eighties. Compatible with every album of that decade. In other words, a return to the old style. Fans who never got the album they wanted and imagined after “Promised Land” (1994) finally got their payoff.
Maybe the one thing that bugged you a bit about “Queensryche” was realizing how extremely short it was, clocking in at around 35 minutes. It was mostly a cautious album. An album born out of the changes the band was going through. So the band used tried-and-tested motifs and phrases that they knew would fire up the fans, who demanded the sound and style Queensryche cultivated in the eighties. And that’s what they got. A very high-quality album.
“Condition Human” continues down the path of its predecessor and runs almost twice as long. The band, completely reborn by Todd La Torre stepping in as vocalist, even dropped the idea of using old ideas that had been sitting in Michael Wilton’s dusty archive drawers until now. Over the past two years the band suddenly found so much creative inspiration that they actually put together entirely fresh original material. The new Queensryche album brings an even more exciting continuation of the story told on its predecessor. It’s noticeably more progressive and varied in its ideas, and therefore unmistakably more challenging in its musical artistry.
The songs were written as a team. A combination of several different authors polishing the material. The album carries that recognizable, honestly unique charisma that marks every classic Queensryche record. Compare it with the others and it should really have come right after “Operation: Mindcrime”. The atmosphere is mostly distinctly dark (Guardian, Toxic Remedy), and the modern production naturally adds the icing on the “drama theater” cake. There are quite a few moments that pull sharply back to the days of “Operation: Mindcrime”, while the songs built in the classic old-school manner of American speed metal drag new ideas all the way back to the earliest period, the album “Warning”. “Condition Human” is hugely varied in its ideas. The songs carry a chorus crescendo that is usually harmonized further with backing vocals. The band also adds more recorded samples and even programmed loops to the new album to deepen the atmosphere, and in those spots the songs gain a progressive element (here they draw on “Operation: Mindcrime”, and the outstanding Hellfire is in many ways structurally reminiscent of Sister Mary Suite, only much more ruffled up). The middle instrumental sections are once again used more than masterfully for atmospheric upheavals.
The band wrote these songs under a microscope and polished every detail. In a short time Queensryche have made a truly excellent album with not a weak spot on it. La Torre is phenomenal on vocals. The vocal range and power he brings are extreme, comparable to John Cyriis (Agent Steel) or Midnight (Crimson Glory). With this album Queensryche didn’t crawl back into diapers, cautiously copying from proven ideas of the past. They delivered the album that should have come after “Operation: Mindcrime”. An album without a trace of the pop elements you can catch a whiff of on “Empire”. “Condition Human” is a freshly inspired album that is 100% heavy metal of the classic American school from head to toe. But given the recognizable, all-their-own artistic touch the band has developed through its evolution, it also has a progressive note, which makes it different and special, yet through and through Queensryche.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
rating: 8.5 / 10
Tracklist:
01. Arrow Of Time
02. Guardian
03. Hellfire
04. Toxic Remedy
05. Selfish Lives
06. Eye9
07. Bulletproof
08. Hourglass
09. Just Us
10. All There Was
11. The Aftermath
12. Condition Hüman
Lineup:
Todd La Torre – vocals
Michael Wilton – guitar
Parker Lundgren – guitar
Eddie Jackson – bass, backing vocals
Scott Rockenfield – drums
