Track Listing
1. Queen of the reich 2. The lady wore black 3. Warning 4. Take hold of the flame 5. Walk in the shadows 6. I dream in infrared 7. I don't believe in love 8. Eyes of a stranger 9. Jet city woman 10. Empire 11. Silent lucidity 12. I am I 13. Bridge 14. Sign of the times Year: 2000 Label: Virgin - Official Site |
Queensr�che - 'Operation: Mindcrime' - By J. Korkiam�ki
17 years of varied music styles and varied musical intelligence. That is pretty much Queensr�che�s story covering the time 1983-2000. The (former) kings and pioneers of progressive heavy metal finally released their own compilation album, forced by their record label. Like you might imagine, The Greatest Hits has been stuffed into too little space by force, being a compilation for a (formerly) great band. The good thing is, that the Hear In The Now Frontier and Q2K material has almost been left out totally, the only song from those two albums altogether is �Sign Of The Times�, and that really is quite a good song. The space left is filled with 13 old songs, one remix/new version (�Someone Else� as a full band version) and one bonus song, which is the b-side of �Sign Of The Times� (at least I think so), an OK song named �Chasing Blue Sky�. Chronological order rules! Thank God these are based on that, when you�re listening to Queensr�che�s old and new songs mixed together, your head could explode. Therein, the compilation begins with �Queen Of The Reich� and �The Lady Wore Black�. I don�t quite understand the presence of the aforementioned. There are other weird choices, too. For example, there are only two songs from the best album in the universe, Operation: Mindcrime, while there�s three covering both Empire and The Promised Land. Why couldn�t they replace �Warning� with, say, �NM 156�? Why did they leave �The Needle Lies� out? The absence of �Roads To Madness� and �Suite Sister Mary� I can still understand, they�re too massive and both the kind of songs you don�t just edit so easily. Like I�ve had to say about most of the compilation albums out there, this is only recommended for those people who are new fans and would like to get acquainted with the material. But, this compilation gives a decent treat to the fans too, nostalgically thinking. Because the sh*t from the latest albums has been scraped off, there�s a lot of the best Queensr�che ever available on this one album. And the best part is, some of the songs probably haven�t been heard for years. Rage For Order is difficult to find from people�s LP or CD cabinets nowadays, and there are two songs from that, those songs espeically bring back great memories of the old Queensr�che. That�s little, but a good start. When you think about the good characteristics of The Greatest Hits, like the chronological order, and leaving off the new ones, this is definitely one of the best compilations ever. Metal Obsessive Grade: 92% |