Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Operation: Mindcrime
Label: Frontiers Records
Release: 2015
Length: 47:59
Rating: 4/5
If Queensryche can do it, so can their former vocalist Geoff Tate. After a legal ordeal (and even some physical scuffles) that ended with Queensryche keeping the right to the name and Tate getting the right to perform the album »Operation: Mindcrime« in its entirety, he gathered a new crew of musicians around him. With them he decided to start not just a new band but also to record fresh original material.
Don’t get me wrong. Tate had already put out a new studio album before the court ruling, back when he’d been “kicked out” of Queensryche but nobody had yet decided who got to use the band’s name. So he released an album under the Queensryche name too. A dark, hard, seriously angry record. No wonder, since it was written in exactly the kind of period when Tate needed a “vent” to blow off steam and get it all off his chest. To pour out every last drop of fury. In the form of a musical document.
»The Key« picks up that trail. Tate’s new band has finally got a new name too, and it’s one you could quietly see coming: Operation: Mindcrime, of course! The new album also promises to be part of a conceptual musical trilogy. The hero finds a key that lets him change the world, so that human beings perceive it in a completely different, new way. Not the one we’ve built on our sensory organs. In this new environment of perception, the human condition changes too. For better or for worse. That’s the story background in a nutshell.
On to the music. »The Key« is a much more relaxed album than its predecessor. It seems Tate’s musical formula, the one he’d been wedging into Queensryche’s sound for years and which took enormous flak especially in the years after the Queensryche album »Promised Land«, finally really clicks. Maybe it would have sooner, if Queensryche had changed their name along with such a pronounced stylistic shift.
»The Key« is an album with excellent, modern production, and in his musical vision Tate proves himself a man who, with a refined feel, fuses elements of progressive rock on one side and pop rock and even alternative rock on the other, all on a heavy metal foundation, into a distinctive calling card you could call art metal or art rock. The album is packed with detail: added recorded spoken bits and dialogues, as is typical of the Queensryche catalog, plus arrangements dosed with programmed loops and even saxophone, which Tate plays himself, while his vocals are in places deliberately run through distortion effects. It’s all geared toward building an unmistakably dark atmosphere. Still, much like with his old Queensryche colleagues, Tate’s basic aim is big musicality. The result is properly crafted songs with heads and tails, whose moods swell gradually all the way to the chorus crescendo. Even though the music on »The Key« is basically a spin-off of the Queensryche albums from the post-»Promised Land« era, there are moments that push back toward the days when the famous Queensryche album »Operation: Mindcrime« was made. One of those is the song Re-Inventing the Future, which is basically a masterfully repackaged I Don’t Believe in Love. But so you don’t get the feeling Geoff Tate is milking »Operation: Mindcrime« as a cash cow to keep lining his pockets, the rest of the album, while it sounds familiar to the ears and reaches back here and there to Queensryche’s last two decades, is still far enough away in its ideas and challenging enough in its experimenting that we can call it part of the healthy evolutionary path Geoff Tate is walking in this new era, not just as a performer but as a musical visionary.
Tate assembled a top-notch crew of musicians for this album! There are bassists Dave Ellefson [Megadeth, Metal Allegiance] and John Moyer [Disturbed, Adrenaline Mob], drummers Simon Wright [AC/DC], Scott Mercado [Candlebox] and Brian Tichy [Billy Idol, Ozzy Osbourne, Foreigner, Whitesnake, Lynch Mob,…], guitarists Kelly Gray [Queensryche] and Scott Moughton [Geoff Tate], keyboardist Randy Gane [Myth], and special guest and singer Mark Daly [The Voodoos], who contributed a wild vocal to the song The Stranger. This is a very seasoned lineup of players whose talents and feel contrast the album’s sonic landscape beautifully and deliver on the goals of Tate’s musical vision. The album is full of detail, and for every single song Tate and the crew carefully picked out the musical finesse that co-creates the album’s specific atmosphere. With Tate’s distinctive, recognizable-from-a-mile-away singing on top, of course.
So in artistic terms, »The Key« is a new adventurous document for Tate and company. It’s full of very good, finished compositions from Tate’s layered vision. They hit the movement they’re going for. Not just in terms of ideas, but also in the constant ebb and flow of moods that keep the dark atmosphere going through the story. It keeps the listener in constant tension. Two more albums are to follow, the two remaining chapters of the trilogy. The first is announced for just six months from now. It’ll be interesting to watch how Tate’s musical adventurism develops from here.
Line-up
Geoff Tate – vocals, saxophone
Scott Moughton – guitar
John Moyer – bass
Randy Gane – keyboards
Simon Wright – drums
Brian Tichy – drums
GUEST MUSICIANS:
David Ellefson – bass
Mark Daily – vocals on track no. 7
Scott Mercado
Production
Kelly Grey & Geoff Tate
Track list
1. Choices
2. Burn
3. Re-Inventing The Future
4. Ready To Fly
5. Discussions In A Smoke Filled Room
6. Life or Death?
7. The Stranger
8. Hearing Voice
9. On Queue
10. An Ambush Of Sadness
11. Kicking In The Door
12. The Fall
