QUEEN II

Queen II reflects the side of Queen that is least known to the pop audience, but made the basis for their later sound. You can recognize here everything they would become known for with the classic rock audience: heavy bass, melodic vocals, aggressive drumming, catchy melodies and a great variety of topics, from society questions to mythical scenes to average lovesongs.

This is really a very strong album with solid rock songs and original songwriting. On itself it might qualify for Heavy Prog, with a mix of Rush, early Pink Floyd and early Led Zeppelin, all from approximately the same period, making this a true product of its time.

Procession is no more than intro to the album, leading fluently into Father to Son, the strongest song on the 'White Side' in my opinion, a catchy hard rock song. The next song, White Queen is much more dramatic, in more of a pop format. Next up is Some Day One Day, the last song of the four written by Brian May. This is a more relaxed song, which is very useful for the balance of the album. Especially the spacey acoustic guitars are beautiful here. The Loser In The End is a blues rock song written and sung by Roger Taylor. In my opinion one of the weaker tracks.

After that, we start with the famous ´Black Side´, where Freddie Mercury worked on some brilliant proto-metal. The first song is Ogre Battle, possibly the hardest and most hectic music Queen have ever produced. Extremely loud bass, high pace rhythm and wild screams all around make this the big surprise of the album. But it´s not stopping there, because next up is The Fairy Feller´s Master Stroke, which might be not as heavy, but equally hectic. This song fluently runs into the short and calm Nevermore.

From there the album jumps into the highlight of the Black Side, `The March Of The Black Queen´. This is song is probably the most popular of all Queen songs to progheads. That´s because it´s an explosive piece out of every proportion, with heavy guitars, complicated structures, many surround sound effects, sweet pianos and all this running through each other at high speed. As said in an other review, this song is a real earlier Bohemian Rhapsody, although it is a lot more uncontrolled, making it less accessible for the mainstream audience. That makes this the forgotten masterpiece of Queen.

Then there is ´Funny How Love Is´. I do not like this song. It is repetitive and quite annoying. It doesn´t really fit with the rest of the album. Luckily, there is still another treat waiting at the end. The hit of the album is another brilliant song with vivid piano and catchy melodies. ´The Seven Seas Of Rhye´ is yet another masterpiece.

This is a strong album, probably the strongest by Queen and a real must-have if you liked their mainstream work. Still some poor songs take down the rest, making this just less than a masterpiece. Still excellent.