At a time when Motley Crue, Bon Jovi and all the acts that followed in their footsteps were ruling MTV, another band was evolving musically on its own fiercely individual terms, barely giving a damn about trends. With every album it changed its style in a big way, and in 1990 it served up what is probably the finest record of its whole catalog. This is the story of Queensryche and their fourth album, »Empire«.
In the dying breaths of the eighties, Queensryche were riding a gigantic wave of creative power that kept pushing the quintet forward in their artistic growth. Considering that its predecessor »Operation: Mindcrime« and »Empire« came out just two years apart, and given how different the musical directions behind them were, it’s clear that only a quintet with a very specific makeup and special chemistry, one that developed independently and organically on its musical path, could have pulled off something like this.
The incredible »Operation: Mindcrime« brought Queensryche their commercial breakthrough in 1988 and put them in front of a much wider audience, as the band finally started getting enough attention from MTV too. »Operation: Mindcrime« – the ultimate definition of the best that concept and heavy metal can offer on a single album – spoke the language of prog alongside works by American bands like Savatage, Crimson Glory and Fates Warning, long before anyone was thinking about the likes of Dream Theater. It was an achievement that felt unbeatable in artistic terms, and it’s not hard to say so even today. Queensryche had no desire to top it with the follow-up. Even less so. They didn’t even want to imitate it. They surely had no idea back then that this evergreen record would one day become one of the crown jewels of heavy metal of all time. But they probably already knew full well that they’d put out something hard to pin down. A one-of-a-kind album, unique in every respect. Unrepeatable. And the very same can be said of its successor »Empire«, on which Queensryche once again confirmed their remarkable confidence and incredible songwriting talent, embodied by the magic of crackling energy lines running across the triangle of creative nuclei formed by the two guitarists, Chris DeGarmo and Michael Wilton, and iconic vocalist Geoff Tate. For »Empire«, Queensryche threw out any thought of a story to hang their new music on. They wanted to deliver an album that put compositional perfection front and center. Compared to the band’s earlier work, it was meant to intensify the blend of sophisticatedly measured moves with punchy phrasing. Queensryche focused first and foremost on squeezing the very best out of their unmistakable songwriting talents. The messages are socially critical and engaged, though there was also some room left for “chasing” romance. The poetry comes mostly from impressions of living in Seattle more than 30 years ago, with the title track pointing its finger straight at the USA as a corrupt empire that was already starting to show the first signs of bursting at the seams.
When you add up the band’s decade on the road through 1990 and the level of maturity Queensryche reached as the eighties wound down, it’s incredible where they took their artistry from those modest beginnings of songwriting inspired by the N.W.O.B.H.M. boom. On »Empire«, they pushed to a creative peak the tendencies of crossing metal with the sophisticated tricks of pop aesthetics that were already noticeable on »Rage for Order« (1986) and »Operation: Mindcrime« (1988). The result was yet another Queensryche album with a unique musical identity and character that’s impossible to match.
With the release of »Empire« on August 20, 1990, via EMI Records, Queensryche hit the commercial peak of their career. On release, »Empire« shot up to No. 7 on the Billboard 200 and sold over three million copies in the US alone, more than all four of their previous studio efforts combined. As the eighties faded out and before the grunge blanket fell over the hair and glam metal debauchery, Queensryche collected a string of prestigious awards with »Empire«. They were also nominated in three different categories for a Grammy, but didn’t manage to take one home. They did, however, pick up an MTV Viewer’s Choice award for the Silent Lucidity video. »Empire« yielded six singles for the band, and by far the most successful was the ballad Silent Lucidity. And what a ballad. A mega ballad, which Chris DeGarmo once presented to his bandmates on acoustic guitar, grew into one of the greatest ballads in rock history, with Michael Kamen providing orchestrations to enrich the sound even further. A hit that, at number nine, slipped into the top ten of the best-selling hits on the American chart.
In January 1991, Queensryche played in front of a crowd of many tens of thousands at the notorious »Rock in Rio« festival, then headed out as headliners on an eighteen-month world tour called »Building Empires«. In the first part of the set, the band played new songs from »Empire«, mixing in classics from their early days, and in the second part performed the entire »Operation: Mindcrime« album. The obligatory encore closed with the ballad Silent Lucidity. But the tour also had a dark stain on it, when an incident took place on November 20, 1990, at a sports hall in Ichtegem, Belgium. During the band’s show, two fans got into a fight. The one with an American passport plunged a knife into the chest of the unfortunate Belgian, who later died from his injuries. The band was playing the seventh song in the set, »Roads To Madness«, and on manager Howard Ungerleider’s orders stopped the show immediately.
In 1991 the live album »Operation: LiveCrime« came out, recorded at the band’s shows that May, and the tour also included a slot on MTV’s television series »MTV Unplugged« in Los Angeles on April 27, 1992, at Warner Hollywood studio.
»Empire«, which was produced once again by Peter Collins, just like »Operation: Mindcrime« (with Jim Barton handling engineering duties) in Vancouver, Canada, remains a timeless musical achievement even after 30 years, embodying the uniqueness of a captured moment, one that the compositional power and tightness of the band’s unforgettable lineup radiated in its own singular way during the golden era of its career. Or as the band’s guitarist Michael Wilton put it: “At that time we managed to bring our music together with the tastes of the audience and the music industry. With »Empire« we reached the peak of our popularity.« Queensryche stayed “hot” with their fifth album too, »Promised Land«, released in 1994, which landed at number three on the Billboard 200, improving on the chart position of »Empire« by four spots.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
