QUEEN II

Even though I was never a BIG Queen fan, I knew the band quite early thanks to a older friend who introduced me to them via imported records. I was quite impressed by this album, the first I ever heard by them. Father To Son was always a favorite of mine and I remember hearing it over and over again in my small cassette player when I was 15. The group was new, fresh with great ideas, and they had this dark, almost gothic atmosphere around them (long before that label was even conceived). In many ways I thought they were quite progressive, since the music was different from almost everything i knew at the time. And I really could never understand why critics said they imitated Led Zeppelin. To me they were as similar as water and oil.

I still think this is one of their best ever releases, prog wise. It is bold, it is strange, it is beautiful and it is challeging. The multi track, almost operatic, vocals were great and Brian May´s guitar orchestrations are some of the best things that ever happened to rock history. Even if some songs are better than others, Queen II is an interesting album to hear as as a whole, it has some of the strangest and darkest songs they ever released (very different from their latter day works).

If you know Queen only by their videos and hits, this CD might surprise you with the dense atmosphere and the dark moods some of the tracks evoke. In the prog world this is the one album to have. Highly recommended.