Queensrÿche () is an American progressive metal band. It formed in 1980 in Bellevue, Washington, and first went by Cross+Fire and then by the Mob before settling on its current name in 1982. The band has released 16 studio albums, one EP, and several DVDs, and continues to tour and record. The original lineup consisted of guitarists Michael Wilton and Chris DeGarmo, drummer Scott Rockenfield and bassist Eddie Jackson. Lead vocalist Geoff Tate was recruited in 1982 to round out the band.
Queensrÿche has sold more than 20 million albums worldwide, including more than six million in the United States. A leader of the progressive metal scene of the mid-to-late 1980s, the band is often referred to as one of the genre's "Big Three", along with Dream Theater and Fates Warning. The band has received three Grammy Award nominations for songs from the albums. In 1998, drummer Rockenfield received an individual Grammy nomination. In 2016, the staff of Loudwire named them the 28th-best metal band of all time.
Queensrÿche self-released its eponymous EP in 1982, and it earned them a following outside of their home state of Washington, as well as a record deal with EMI Records, who reissued the EP the following year. Queensrÿche's popularity grew through the 1980s with their first three studio albums, The Warning (1984), Rage for Order (1986) and Operation: Mindcrime (1988), the latter of which is widely considered among the greatest heavy metal concept albums. Their fourth album, Empire (1990), was also very successful and included one of the band's biggest hits "Silent Lucidity". That album, along with Operation: Mindcrime, cemented Queensrÿche's status as one of the most successful American heavy metal bands. After some turmoil between its band members in the 1990s, DeGarmo left the band in 1998 for personal reasons, returning briefly to write and record their eighth studio album Tribe (2003). Over the years, his replacements have been Kelly Gray, Mike Stone, and Parker Lundgren.
Tate was fired from the band after a highly publicized backstage altercation before a show in São Paulo, Brazil, in April 2012. He was replaced with then–Crimson Glory singer Todd La Torre. Tate and his wife Susan (who served as the band's manager from 2005 to 2012) filed a lawsuit in a Washington court, claiming that he was wrongfully terminated. The ruling in the preliminary injunction was that both parties were allowed to use the name Queensrÿche until a court ruling or a settlement decided who would get to use the name. A settlement was reached on April 17, 2014, in which founding members Wilton, Rockenfield and Jackson received the rights to the band trademark. They have continued to perform, adding lead vocalist La Torre and guitarist Lundgren to the lineup.
During the time both parties could use the name Queensrÿche, Tate created his own lineup featuring former rhythm guitarist Gray and musicians from bands including Blue Öyster Cult, Ozzy Osbourne, Whitesnake, Dio, AC/DC and Quiet Riot. This version of Queensrÿche with Tate released the album Frequency Unknown on April 23, 2013, while Queensrÿche (with La Torre replacing Tate) released their eponymous album two months later. Both bands toured in 2013 and 2014, after which Tate changed the name of his version of Queensrÿche to Operation: Mindcrime. The La Torre-fronted Queensrÿche has since recorded three more albums with him: Condition Hüman (2015), The Verdict (2019) and their newest release Digital Noise Alliance (2022).
History 1980–1983: From the Mob to Queensrÿche The foundations for Queensrÿche began in the late 1970s, when guitarist Michael Wilton started the band Joker with friends in 1978, and they were joined by guitarist Chris DeGarmo in 1979. In 1980, Wilton met drummer Scott Rockenfield at Easy Street Records in Seattle, and they formed the band Cross+Fire together on July 18 that year. They covered songs from popular heavy metal bands such as Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, and practiced in the garage of Rockenfield's parents which they called "The Dungeon" and fitted with egg cartons as acoustic cladding. Before long, DeGarmo and bassist Eddie Jackson joined Cross+Fire, and the band name was changed to the Mob, after the Black Sabbath song "The Mob Rules". In need of a singer for a one-off performance at a local rock festival, they recruited Babylon frontman Geoff Tate. After Babylon broke up, Tate performed a few shows with the Mob, but left because he was not interested in performing heavy metal covers.
In 1981, the Mob put together sufficient funds to record a demo tape. Still without a singer, Tate was once again enlisted to help, much to the disapproval of his then-current band, Myth. The group recorded the four songs "Queen of the Reich", "Nightrider", "Blinded", and "The Lady Wore Black", the latter of which Tate had written the lyrics for. For an entire year, they brought their demo to various labels and were rejected by all of them. The Mob were ultimately offered a management contract by Kim and Diana Harris, the owners of Easy Street Records. However, as Tate remained committed to staying in Myth, the band reluctantly searched for another singer.
Because the name "the Mob" was not available, their manager urged them to choose a different name. They reportedly ran out of ideas, and decided to name the band after the first song on their demo tape, "Queen of the Reich". The spelling "Queensreich" was modified to prevent association of the band with Nazism; "ryche" is a Middle English cognate to "Reich" which, like the German word, can mean "realm", "kingdom" or "empire". The name "Queensrÿche" is written with a metal umlaut over the letter "y". As the band later joked: "The umlaut over the 'y' has haunted us for years. We spent eleven years trying to explain how to pronounce it."Gidley, Lisa. "Spinal Tap's main man explains the importance of the umlaut". www.spiraling.com. Retrieved April 26, 2006. The umlaut is used on all of Queensrÿche's releases, except for their 2011 album, Dedicated to Chaos.
1983–1987: The Warning and Rage for Order Kim Harris sent the demo tape and a band photo to a friend who wrote for Kerrang! magazine, resulting in a glowing review. On the strength of the growing buzz that surrounded them in both the United States and Europe following this review, the Harrises released Queensrÿche's demo tape as a self-titled EP on their independent label 206 Records in 1982. After the EP garnered international praise, receiving much airplay and selling an unusual number of copies for a small independent release, Tate agreed to leave Myth and become Queensrÿche's permanent lead singer.
On June 29 and 30, 1983, Queensrÿche was the opening act for Zebra in Portland and Seattle respectively. Kim Harris knew A&R manager Mavis Brodey of EMI-America from the time she was the music director of KZOK-FM, and he convinced her to come to one of these shows. Brodey offered Queensrÿche a contract with EMI, spanning 15 years and encompassing seven albums. EMI re-released the EP Queensrÿche to moderate success, peaking at No. 81 on the Billboard charts. The band toured with Quiet Riot through the South and with Twisted Sister to the East Coast and Canada, and opened for Dio in Seattle.
After the EP tour, Queensrÿche travelled to London to record their first full-length album. The band worked with producer James Guthrie, who had worked with Pink Floyd and Judas Priest. Released in September 1984, The Warning showed the band in an early stage of development, with a sound similar to classic metal bands, although the length of "No Sanctuary" and the lyrics of "N M 156" hinted at a more progressive direction. The album peaked at No. 61 on the Billboard album chart, a moderate commercial success. While none of the singles released from The Warning charted domestically, "Take Hold of the Flame" was a hit for the band outside the U.S., and particularly in Japan.Rivadavia, Eduardo. [ AMG review of The Warning]. AllMusic. Retrieved April 24, 2006. The band's first full-scale U.S. tour (in support of this album) was as the opening act for Kiss on their Animalize tour and Iron Maiden on their Powerslave tour. They also opened for Dio and Accept on their tours for The Last in Line and Metal Heart respectively.
Rage for Order, released in 1986, introduced a much more polished look and sound for Queensrÿche, while the band was pressured by their management to adopt an image more closely associated with glam metal. Tate later described the period as "we were really into [that] image and we failed miserably." However, the album itself was slightly more progressive than the band's previous releases, having a layered and complex musical structure, and featuring keyboards as prominently as guitars. A video was filmed for the song "Gonna Get Close to You", written and originally recorded in 1984 by Dalbello. The song "Rage for Order" was written and demoed for the album, but it was not included on the final release. The main riff from this song was worked into an instrumental piece played during some shows on the tour in support of this album, and eventually morphed into the track "Anarchy-X" on their next album. Queensrÿche supported Rage for Order with a tour that included opening for AC/DC, Bon Jovi, Ozzy Osbourne and Ratt, and playing with other bands such as Black 'n Blue, Fates Warning, Gang Green, Keel and Raven.
1988–1993: Operation: Mindcrime, Empire, and mainstream success
In 1988, Queensrÿche released Operation: Mindcrime, a narrative concept album that proved a massive critical and commercial success. The album's story revolved around a junkie named Nikki, who is brainwashed into performing assassinations for an underground movement. Nikki is torn over his misplaced loyalty to the cause and his love for Mary, a reformed hooker-turned-nun (vocals by Pamela Moore), who gets in the way. The band's progressive metal style was fully developed on this album.Huey, Steve. AMG review of Operation: Mindcrime. AllMusic. Retrieved October 12, 2015. The band toured through much of 1988 and 1989 with several bands, including Def Leppard, Guns N' Roses and Metallica. The album gained critical acclaim and achieved gold status, while two of its singles "Eyes of a Stranger" and "I Don't Believe in Love" gave Queensrÿche their first charting hits in America.
The release of Empire (1990) brought Queensrÿche to the height of their commercial popularity. It peaked at No. 7 and sold more than three million copies in the United States, more than their previous four releases combined (it was also certified silver in the UK). The power ballad "Silent Lucidity", which featured an orchestra, became the band's first Top 10 single. The arrangements on Empire were more straightforward than the band's previous efforts.
The subsequent "Building Empires" tour was the first full-fledged tour to feature Queensrÿche as a headlining act (the band had previously headlined a tour in Japan in support of Operation: Mindcrime, and had headlined a handful of club and theater shows in the U.S. between 1984 and 1988, and the UK in 1988). The group used its headlining status to perform Operation: Mindcrime in its entirety, as well as songs from Empire. The tour lasted 18 months, longer than any tour the band had undertaken before or has since. The tour also added a black page to the band's history, when during a show in a sports hall in Ichtegem, Belgium on November 20, 1990, a scuffle in the audience resulted in an American fan stabbing a Belgian fan fatally in the chest. Tour manager Howard Ungerleider immediately stopped the show as the band was only playing the seventh song on the set list, "Roads to Madness". A live album, recorded May 10–12, 1991, was released later that year as Operation: Livecrime. The tour also included an MTV Unplugged appearance at Warner Hollywood Studios in Los Angeles on April 27, 1992.