EMPIRE

After Rage for Order and Operation: Mindcrime, this album was a bit of a disappointment for me. Keeping in mind that I was a bit of a 'metalhead' at the time, the fact that this album is more rock than metal likely was the main reason for this. Over time, I've become a bit more open minded, and I did start playing Empire a bit more often. Not a lot more though, because I still prefer Operation: Mindcrime or Ayreon's The Final Experiment if I really have to choose.

Looking at the songs, I notice that songs like Best I Can, Resistance and Another Rainy night are quite 'catchy' (if that is the proper word to use). Best I Can somehow even reminds me of some of the better tracks by - heaven help me - Survivor, luckily the song is just a bit more complicated than the usual track by those guys.

Silent Lucidity is a nice song to listen to, but the fact that it's the only Queensryche song I ever heard play on Dutch radio also tells me it's probably not that progressive. I have the same problem with Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall pt 2...

Della Brown and Empire are the stronger tracks on the album for me, while Hand On Heart could have been left out on my part. All in all though, this album caused me to take a very good listen before buying another Queensryche album, and the only two I bought since are Operation:LiveCrime, and Operation:Mindcrime II (I am still not sure what to think of that last one, but that's for another time). Empire is not bad, but also not an album that I would recommend to someone getting into Queensryche - there's too little Mindcrime and too little Rage For Order in there.

One final note here on the credits for the songs: The fact that Chris DeGarmo took the lead on this album is not the real reason it's 'just a rock album'. Chris' mindset at the time is what was really wrong - after all, he's still the (co-)composer of some of Queensryche's best tracks, like Anarchy-X, Eyes of a Stranger and Neue Regel. Not to mention that some of the best metal tracks ever (including Queen of the Reich) were his work. None of them main stream MTV material, so I wonder how he feels about Empire after 15 years...

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