BACKGROUND

Queensrÿche, previously lead by known major asshole Geoff Tate until the rest of the band kicked him out of his own group, plays a mix of heavy metal, power metal, progressive metal, and alt-rock. Presented below are two thematically connected concept albums, one that rules and one that sucks. Prepare to get mindcrimed!

Figure 1: Mom’s five prettiest cousins.

SAMPLE IDENTIFICATION

Studio Album #3 – Operation: Mindcrime (1988)
Studio Album #9 – Operation: Mindcrime II (2006)

METALLURGICAL EVALUATION

Operation: Mindcrime (1988)

Is this the first power metal/progressive metal rock opera? I’m actually impressed with this. I think most thrash bands were being political by 1988, but political commentary on a progressive metal rock opera? Evergreen political commentary on corporate greed, media dishonesty, government corruption, and societal hypocrisy? This album is 37 years old, man. Nothing in America has changed.

But the tunes themselves are solid. Queensrÿche somehow narrowly skirted glam metal band status, but this is nothing but pop music for self-proclaimed tough guys. Step lively, earworms are all over the place! The choruses of “Revolution Calling” and “The Needle Lies”, for example, have impeccably strong melodies. Soaring guitar lines fill each song, crisp and clean and crunchy. There’s bombast and excess. There’s moody restraint. It never gets too pretentious or wankeried. Maybe a little too serious, but Geoff Tate doesn’t have a sense of humor anyway. The concept is a story about a cult leader training an assassin via heroin addiction to kill political enemies to further his personal agenda. Not much room for yucks anyway, I’d say.

At one hour, Operation: Mindcrime absolutely flies by. One banger after another, this is one of the most enjoyable and consistent progressive rock albums I’ve ever listened to. And original too; I haven’t heard many progressive metal albums that sound quite like this one. Usually the genre is bogged down with fanciful, unrestrained concepts, over-complex arrangements, and lack of cohesion. Operation: Mindcrime suffers from none of these usual problems. Eat shit, Dream Theater.

So, naturally, after all the critical acclaim and praise, Geoff Tate decided to eventually to make a horrendous sequel almost 20 years later. Let’s see how that panned out.

Operation: Mindcrime II (2006)

Tensions were high during production of Operation Mindcrime II. By 2006 the rest of the band really hated Tate and they disagreed with him on his idea to continue the original story. To that end, most of the band refused to even contribute to the album, so Tate hired session musicians. All these should’ve been signs to quit while ahead, but Tate was stubborn and now we have this horseshit.

Operation: Mindcrime II pales in comparison to its counterpart, and that’s an understatement. The album is absolutely boring, with little to no actual melodies. “I’m American” is the highlight, but musically it sounds like a ripoff of Iron Maiden’s “The Prisoner”. There are even moments where Tate seems to rip off his own music, with a few tracks sounding like cutting room floor snippets off of Operation: Mindcrime and Empire. Interspersed between lackluster alt-rock tunes are occasional weird, minimalistic instrumental snippets and noodlings — filler. Lots of filler.

The story aims to continue the clearly finished saga of Nikki the unwitting assassin, but I’ve listened to the album quite a few times now with no real idea of what the new story actually is. Apparently we’re two decades ahead of where we were from the original story with Nikki plotting his revenge against Dr. X. There’s something about Mary’s ghost. It’s all really stupid.

The world did not need a phoned-in Operation: Mindcrime II. Boo to this. The rest of Tate’s band was correct about it.