6 keepers
keeper avg .545
Queensrÿche sneaked in their fourth album just over a year before G-day (that's G for grunge), lucking into massive commercial success with the aid of the top ten hit "Silent Lucidity." Instead of opening the album with the rather conventional but triumphant up-tempo rocker "Resistance"****, which they used to open their shows on the Empire tour, they somewhat boldly open the album with the edgy "Best I Can," whose prominent keyboard and dramatic flair primarily reminded me of Styx. "The Thin Line" is also unashamedly prog, though it's the 80's Genesis variety with lots of jarring synthesizer stabs; except for the dramatic chorus it's kind of aimless and seems longer than it really is.
Though it was a new decade it took a while for these 80's bands to get the memo; guitarist Chris DeGarmo was playing (verses at least) with lots of clean, delayed guitar strumming, much like what Rush was doing around this time before all the hard rock bands started adapting their sound in response to grunge. The DeGarmo co-written "Suite Sister Mary"-like prog-rock excursion "Della Brown" celebrates this; the highly syncopated rhythm section and restrained playing give it a cool nocturnal vibe though over 7-minutes of it is a bit much. The same could also be said of the DeGarmo co-written mainstream rock singles "Jet City Woman"**** and "Another Rainy Night (Without You)"****, though they also both have massive hooks and harmony-drenched choruses, while the former begins with a satisfyingly rumbly bass line. By comparison, the album's high point and title track "Empire"***** is more directly heavy metal, propelled by Michael Wilton's melodic Scorpions-influenced riffage; also, however outdated its message may sound today, it was a definite attempt to be socially conscious about the reality of gangs and inner cities.
Of course it was the DeGarmo co-written "Silent Lucidity" that made the band real-deal pop stars and sold all those albums. I was a little late to the Queensrÿche party so like most people this odd-ball acoustic/orchestral ballad with a dramatic orchestral/metal bridge was my introduction to the band. Funny how at that time I never noticed how the song strongly resembles "Comfortably Numb" (1979), down to the way the key modulates in the bridge (like the end of "Comfortably Numb" in this case). On the other hand "Anybody Listening?"****, which ends the album, is the album's true power ballad, taken right from Scorpions' playbook with some Boston riffs sprinkled in, but also based around DeGarmo's same guitar picking pattern from "Silent Lucidity." The extra-tame "Hand on Heart" and the propulsively chugging (a-la Def Leppard) "One and Only"**** round out the second half of the album. Following-up on the career-defining "Operation: Mindcrime" album and with a handful of strong singles, Queensrÿche was continuing to mature into a songwriting juggernaut that relied on melodies and hooks rather than the speed and volume of their Iron Maiden-influenced earlier material. Fortunately for them, they managed to drop perhaps one of the last great hard rock album of the 80's before their whole musical genre turned into a pumpkin.
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