Empire reviewed

 

Picking a favorite album for me is all but impossible.  Having to sift through a mess of noise and words to determine what's the best mess is a daunting task.  But if I had to pick one it would probably have to be Queensryche's Operation Mindcrime.  With it's sweeping story, pounding riffs and being masterfully sung by singer Geoff Tate there is much to love about that album and I keep hearing new things and see new sides every time I listen to it.  And then they released the follow-up Empire in which it contains Queensryche's only Top 40 hit "Silent Lucidity" which is a very good album but then again, it's still under Mindcrime's considerable shadow.

But it's not like Queensryche doesn't try.  The band most certainly gives it their all with some great riffs and some amazing sounds.  They even stretch how long their songs are with none of them being shorter than 4 minutes and it never becomes boring.  Even when they do some sampling like the "black man" bit in the title track or the beginning of "Best I Can" it's only done when it'll make the most impact and it makes the album a bit better.  

Of course, I would probably be beaten into a pulp if I didn't mention "Silent Lucidity".  There's a reason for this, it's my favorite song from Queensryche.  Now I know what you're thinking: That album wasn't in Operation Mindcrime how can that be your favorite song?  Simple, Mindcrime mostly worked as an album rather than a collection of awesome songs.  "Silent Lucidity" stands alone with it's sweeping orchestration, great albeit weird-dreamlike lyrics and an emotional vocal performance from Geoff Tate.  It may be a ballad and it may be uncool to like the song everyone else does but there's a reason for it being so popular...IT IS THAT DAMN GOOD!

There's a couple blights on the album that does bring it down.  Like I said before, Operation Mindcrime still looms strongly on Queensryche and a couple songs do sound like a couple of Mindcrime's songs.  "Jet City Woman" pretty much charts the same course that "Eyes of a Stranger" charted and the beginning of "Anybody Listening?" has the same riff as "Electric Requiem".  Also, why I do say the songs don't get boring despite their length there is some dead air and I do get impatient waiting for the next song to start.

Despite Empire's faults it's still a very good album.  The riffs are still pounding and heavy, the drumwork is impressive and the production is lush and sweeping.  With an album that contains such tracks like the title track, "Best I Can" and "Silent Lucidity" you can't go wrong with this.  Just try not to compare it to Operation Mindcrime.

8/10

Hardrock Heroes reviewed

So if you known me for a decent amount of time, you'll know that I'm hard-rock/metal guy and I do like reading books on the subject especially about the history of the genre.  Then I was wandering about a bookstore and I saw Hardrock Heroes which looked like a standard history of various bands like AC/DC, Megadeth, Metallica, Motorhead and a bunch of other guys.  I flipped through it and it was a graphic novel that told standard histories of various bands.  I figured it was a cute gimmick and it was worth owning.  Now did the gimmick make things more interesting or just more horrible?  Let's find out as we rock with Hardrock Heroes.


What really got me was the breadth of all the bands that were covered here.  Of course I mentioned AC/DC, Metallica, Megadeth and Motorhead but you also got Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne, Poison, Queensryche and then mini-biographies of the Runaways and Pantera among many others.  But this is a compilation of a bunch of comics from the early 90's, most of the stories end at 1990.  So we don't see the fall of Poison, the comeback of Black Sabbath with Ozzy and Dio, Queensryche becoming big with "Silent Lucidity" or Van Halen getting back with David Lee Roth among others.  In fact, the only bands that actually have complete histories that didn't break up are AC/DC, Metallica, Megadeth and Motorhead.  It's very irritating when the story ends and all the best parts aren't covered since the comic was written before they happened.

There's a couple things that struck me about the writing itself while telling these stories.  The first is that there's quite a few errors, now most of them relate to chart positions and that's a case of me being a nerd about these things so that's somewhat forgivable.  But when you get release dates wrong is a bit unforgivable.  And when you make horrible errors like Guns n Roses beating Metallica for the first metal grammy instead of Jethro Tull or when Ozzy biting the head of a dove after his first two solo albums instead of before when he was begging for a record deal are quite unforgivable.  The second thing is how stilted and somewhat out-of-character the dialogue feels.  When you have to combine the history into a narrative, things get weird where the guys say facts and exposition instead of dialogue.  But there's a couple good things in there, Motorhead's story is told when Lemmy is having a near-death experience and his life is flashing before his eyes, Queensryche's story is told by Dr. X, the villain from the Operation Mindcrime albums, and a cute if over-bearing parody of Motley Crue.

As for the art in this, it's varies.  Sometimes, it's hard to differentiate between the band members and other times it's drawn very realistically.  But it seems like they have two huge problems.  The first problem is that seem to scan the various album covers into the various panels.  That's a fine idea in theory but this is a black-and-white comic so all the covers get to do is bleed together in an almost black fashion, not as black as Spinal Tap but it's blacker than what the real album covers are.  The second is that no one seems to be able to draw close-ups of mouths.  It's all misshapen and the teeth are very awkwardly placed making it way too creepy for me. 

So basically this is nothing more than a mere novelty that isn't worth full-price.  The dialogue is stilted.  Factual errors happen too many times.  The art is ok at times but it should have been a lot better.  The fact that most of the stories end at 1990 is frustrating.  There are a few stories that are decent and if you never heard of these stories before that you might be entertained but it's not something that you should rush out to get.

5/10