Queensrÿche is the thirteenth studio album by American progressive metal band Queensrÿche, and the first to feature new singer Todd La Torre. It was released during a time when there were two different versions of the band, the other led by former singer Geoff Tate, who would give up his rights to the name in an amicable settlement in 2014.
The album was released through Century Media in digital format and on CD (standard and deluxe edition) and LP on June 24 in Europe; on June 25, 2013, in the U.S. and Canada, and on August 21 in Japan through Avalon Records. The album was produced by James Barton (also known as "Jimbo" Barton), who had previously mixed and engineered Queensrÿche's hit albums Operation: Mindcrime and Empire and co-produced Promised Land.
Background
Since the mid-1990s, Queensrÿche had been struggling with declining album sales and dwindling fan interest. Queensrÿche's twelfth album, Dedicated to Chaos, was released in 2011 to a mixed reception: some critics gave positive reviews, but others panned the album, in part due to great stylistic differences to previous albums.
Furthermore, it became apparent that there were longstanding tensions in the band between lead vocalist Geoff Tate and the rest of the band: these tensions openly manifested themselves at a concert on April 14, 2012, in São Paulo, Brazil, when Tate, who was irate over the firing of his wife Susan and stepdaughter Miranda as the band's manager and fanclub manager, respectively, allegedly physically assaulted and spat on drummer Scott Rockenfield and guitarist Michael Wilton.
While the other founding members - Rockenfield, Wilton and bassist Eddie Jackson - had hoped to reconcile with Tate, they instead decided to fire him. (Exhibit E.)
Tate subsequently filed a preliminary injunction lawsuit, disputing ownership of the band name, that resulted in a verdict that both Tate and the other band members were allowed to use the band name until the next court date. Tate started his own version of the band, and released the album Frequency Unknown under the Queensrÿche moniker through Deadline Music on April 23, 2013. The case was settled in April 2014, awarding the Queensrÿche brand to Jackson, Rockenfield and Wilton.
At the time Tate was fired, Jackson, Rockenfield, Wilton and guitarist Parker Lundgren had been working with another vocalist, Todd La Torre, under the name "Rising West". They did this to earn an income while Tate was working on his second solo album Kings & Thieves, and would also be touring in support of that album. As Rising West, they performed material from Queensrÿche's first five studio releases (counting from the Queensrÿche EP up to Empire). These releases are generally considered the band's heaviest material, and according to La Torre, "those are the songs and the time period that most represented the core sound of what Queensrÿche material was about." This side project was received with much enthusiasm: both shows they had scheduled to play at Seattle's Hard Rock Cafe in June 2012 sold out in less than 48 hours, and people started calling them "the new Queensrÿche".
Following Tate's firing, La Torre was officially announced as Tate's replacement, and the band continued under the name Queensrÿche.
Things started developing quickly for the group when they met their future band manager, Glen Parrish of PGM Management, who approached them after the Rising West show on June 9, 2012. Parrish had called the management company in Los Angeles, and according to Wilton he told them: "I have something very hot here and we should grab these guys before someone else does". The band had "at least 3 or 4 record labels" that they were negotiating with, and Parrish chose to sign Queensrÿche with Century Media. This was made public in early March 2013, along with the announcement that the band would release an album on June 11. On March 25, 2013, the European release date was set on June 10. When the album's cover was presented, these dates were pushed back to June 24 and 25.
Music
Before La Torre became the singer for Queensrÿche, he was already collaborating with Wilton since early 2012 to write lyrics and record vocals on some of Wilton's unused demos. The song "Don't Look Back", which was used on the album, is "basically what started everything". Shortly after La Torre had officially joined the band in June 2012, they started writing songs for the album. Although the band was on tour playing songs from Queensrÿche's earliest albums, they wanted to prevent becoming a nostalgia act, by writing new songs.
Songwriting Over the past decade, Wilton and Rockenfield had written songs for previous Queensrÿche albums that Tate discarded in favor of songs he wrote with outside writers, such as Jason Slater. However, they chose not to use them for this album, according to Wilton "because there was such a renewed inspiration in the band. (...) I might go revisit [the demos] sometime, but for this album I wanted it all fresh and new." Wilton has also said: "Songs were often written in a day." It became a collaborative effort without any involvement from outside writers, unlike the group's final albums with Tate. Dutch metal magazine Aardschok co-founder "Metal Mike" van Rijswijk says that during the Alcatraz Metal Festival on August 12, 2012, La Torre let him hear 17 demos they were working on, and he discovered that "many of the fast-paced 'Queen of the Reich'-like tracks didn't make the album", in favor of the more mid-tempo songs that would have fitted well on Operation: Mindcrime or Empire.
The collaborative effort is highlighted by that each band member is credited at least once on the album, and that the band members went beyond their respective instruments. Aside from providing drum parts, Rockenfield wrote drum and guitar parts, melodies and did all orchestration. Some drum and guitar parts were written by La Torre; most notably the drum part for "Where Dreams Go to Die". La Torre wrote the guide bass track for "Redemption", and a guitar part he wrote, which was originally intended as a solo, was used as the outro for a song. All guitar solos were written by Wilton, except "Where Dreams Go to Die" and "Don't Look Back", which were written by Lundgren. Several solos feature the guitar harmonies that Wilton and Chris DeGarmo were known to do on Queensrÿche's classic albums. Wilton says: "The majority of fans really liked that dual guitar tone (...) We don’t want to overplay but we wanna put some double solos in there and some parts that really lend themselves to that two guitar player sound." He finds that it makes sense to take advantage of having two guitar players in the band that are capable of playing solos.
All lyrics were written by La Torre, except: Jackson wrote the lyrics to "Fallout" and most of the lyrics to "In This Light", Rockenfield wrote the lyrics to "Vindication" and had written the first verses to "Open Road", and Lundgren wrote the lyrics to "Where Dreams Go to Die". La Torre also wrote several melodies, but Jackson wrote the melody to "Fallout" and co-wrote the melody to "In This Light" with La Torre, and Wilton wrote the melody to "Redemption".
Lundgren had written the music and draft lyrics for "Where Dreams Go to Die". He worked on the song with La Torre via Skype. They among others replaced Lundgren's poppier and more punk-sounding vocal melody by a different one proposed by La Torre, and lowered some chords to fit a melody line over it. Lundgren allowed La Torre to use whatever he wanted of the lyrics, but La Torre ultimately used them all while adding some lyrics of his own. Lundgren and La Torre wanted to present a demo to the band that had already matured more into a song, which is why La Torre created a scratch drum part. He was uncertain how Rockenfield would respond to it, but outside of having no problem with it, by the time the drums were recorded, La Torre was surprised to find that Rockenfield had only made some changes in the verses and chorus to put in his signature drumming style, but he left the overall track intact. Rockenfield explained this, saying: "They were so good that I kept them and translated them into what I would do." After that, Wilton added some guitar parts, including a small bridge, and Rockenfield contributed the orchestration, additional arrangements, and the intro track, "X2".
"Redemption" was the second song the band worked on for the album. Wilton set out to write a song like "Empire", with a hooky guitar riff to take the listener to the chorus. He came up with the music and melody for it in one day, starting with a riff inspired by the song "Empire", in A440 drop D." La Torre wrote the lyrics and created a guide bass line. According to Wilton, "it just flowed effortlessly" after Rockenfield had added the demo track of the drums. The working title to the song was "I'm Redemption". "Vindication" was also originally written by Wilton. He describes it as "a burner", and when writing he especially focused on the drums on the track, that would have Rockenfield "really playing like he did back in the old days".
Rockenfield wrote the music for "In This Light", "A World Without", and "Open Road". After finishing the framework, consisting of drums and guitars, he sent the demo to La Torre, who would write lyrics and melodies to the song. Rockenfield and La Torre turned out to have a great songwriting chemistry together, which became evident during their first collaboration on "A World Without". When Rockenfield emailed the band the framework of "A World Without" he had just finished at home, it already had that name as a placeholder song title. La Torre was at his home in Florida and received the song around 2 or 3 a.m. La Torre said: "I played it and started typing as I was feeling the melody", finishing the lyrics and melody to the song in less than an hour. He recorded the vocals, and within two hours sent it back to Rockenfield, telling him: "It is done." They called one another, with La Torre saying in happy tears: "It was the most moving piece of music that brought me to a place, and I'm just so touched by it." Wilton subsequently started writing the guitar solo, and Rockenfield worked on orchestration for the song to be put on top of the heavy guitars, explaining: "I was really in a zone when I wrote it. We wanted to make that as epic as possible. We got an orchestra, [and] we brought in Pamela Moore as the guest voice." Wilton said it "is certainly atmospheric and epic, and that Scott Rockenfield is doing all the orchestration and the implementation of the violins and cello certainly add to that." Rockenfield and La Torre wrote "Open Road" a week after "A World Without". According to La Torre, the process was similar: "it just took me into a certain place". The lyrics and melody were finished in a few hours, after which Wilton wrote a solo for it.
Recording and production In mid September 2012, it became known that the band had started to record demos of new material with La Torre. The material was described as being "heavier than anything [the band] put out in years!", and that it would become "a hard rock record with some metal elements to it." The album was said to be a return to band's sound in the 80s and early 90s,Todd La Torre-Fronted Version Of Queensrÿche Begins Recording New Album. Blabbermouth.net. Retrieved on November 26, 2012. ranging from the Queensrÿche EP up to Promised Land. Rockenfield has admitted they had wanted to do that, but were never allowed to.