Duncan, don't try and force yourself to like it. I tried to do that with O:M2 and I can never get those few hours back. It's a product of it's time. If it were released today it would be ho-hum as it's been done before(the concept piece/album) by many bands since then. Back then, in hard rock/metal you had Rush who was layered in keyboards at that point, Fates Warning had just done Ivory Gate of Dreams and then O:M came out. That was it, as far as I knew.
They made it about the songs and the songs, IMO, work. They got the story right, it makes sense and has the required mystery around it but they made it accessible. They got rid of almost all the progginess, wrote some catchy hooks and throw in subversive lyrics and you get a cult classic that almost never got as big as it did. It took them a year or so to make the Video:Mindcrime thing then when the videos hit EmptyV it blew up.
It's not a prog album but it's a band that had prog tendencies losing those tendencies, starting to learn how to write songs(which they forgot only ten years later) but it was then, not now, and while the lyrics could easily translate to today's world(it ain't that much different) it still doesn't have the punch it had back then.
My mission saved the world. We'll all stand proud. Gives me chills.
Carry On My Blood-Ejaculating Son - JKL2000
At the time, I was an angry man.
This album said everything to me.
And when I am that angry man again, I do reach for this disc.
I bought the sequel more as a 'pouring one out for da homies'. Listened once, filed away.
Death inspires me like a dog inspires a rabbit
Operation BeardCrime
Well, it's a product of its time. The production is dated and the music is more small p progressive than the real deal. That said, in '88 and '89 it was the bees knees. Smart hard rock/metal was hard to come by in the days of hair metal and this of course was light years beyond that crap. A concept album with smarts, ambition, and passion was a rarity in the heyday of Motley Crue, Poison, et. al. And then to follow up that with Empire, it was like they could do no wrong. Part of the reason was that Chris DeGarmo was on a shit-hot writing streak in those days. Then the decline from the peak began. I will not speak of the sequel, it does not deserve it.
I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart
i wrote a little anniversary piece for O:M’s 30th birthday. join me in celebrating one of all time’s greatest gateway albums.
Queensr˙che | “Operation: Mindcrime” | EMI
I have before me a quote from the perennially entertaining readers’ letters section of an old (ca. 1990) KERRANG! Magazine. I always employ it when the situation arises to discuss the raison d’entré of bands and artists and their dialectic relationship with the greater public (“yeah, those animals”, John Stelfox). It says: “Aren’t bands that entertain you just as valid as bands that make you think?”.
Just to pre-empt this, Queensr˙che in their heyday did both to sumptuous degrees and thus deserve every accolade that was heaped on them. “Operation: Mindcrime” is a monolithic album to this day – and a very happy birthday to it, too (30). But it was also an important release when one places it exactly within its time and where rock/metal music was generally headed then. Queensr˙che were a talented band from the Judas Priest school of piercing operatic vocals and deft twin guitar arrangements, albeit with a futuristic, slightly left-field slant and added elements of Iron Maiden’s subliminal nerddom. Whereas their debut EP and album (1983’s “The Warning”) were very much in that vein, 1986’s “Rage For Order” already possessed a much darker, experimental quality bordering on new wave and goth and displayed well that this was a band looking very much beyond your average contemporary Monsters Of Rock festival billing.
“Operation: Mindcrime”, released in 1988, remains one of the most cited concept albums and, although not setting the world alight straight away, quickly garnered cult status. In fact, Queensr˙che had to release another album (1990’s acclaimed “Empire”) to be able to fully perform “O:R” on stage with all the bells and whistles attached … and promptly released a box set of that performance. The album is never an overbearing listen but also a damn great collection of songs which are also easy to enjoy out of context. Its messages on mass citizen control, the neo-liberalism of American Reaganomics and the collateral damage of social outcasts have lost none of their validity. If applicable at all the album gathered its public momentum over some time that both carried the band on – and burned it down along the way. Queensr˙che tried several times after with often fine but successively more patchy efforts but were always to be put up against this album as an unattainable yardstick which – in consequence – broke the band. Both up and for good.
There is also a purely temporal aspect to “O:M” which sees very little public mention and still deserves some rectification. The release of the album ushered in the shift from the hegemony of Tinseltown rawk‘n’rawl moronia to the (then) lesser known music scene in the city of Seattle which became all the rage within a year of this album’s landing. As the debauchery of L.A.’s glammy metal and hard rock nomenclatura became too ubiquitous and self-serving for its own good, the more intellectual air of Geoff Tate’s and Chris DeGarmo’s writing as well as the almost punky vibe of “O:M”’s visual style (in stark contrast to “Rage for Order”’s rampant bouffantery) provided an early alternative which saw the focus shift to Jet City’s own Mudhoney, early inceptions of Soundgarden, the Screaming Trees, Green River and, of course, Nirvana who would settle a new world order for good in 1991 with their sophomore release. Queensr˙che included, none of these bands sounded alike but they all shared a desire to offer a more challenging alternative to the rock of corporate America. “Seattle band” is still a term of some repute. Queensr˙che were the first Seattle band of their era and by 1990 and “Empire” their short-lived global reign was a done deal. That their music and their cerebral superstructure were so good and inviting to one and all is a small act of serendipidy in rock history. It got lost all too soon as Seattle rock gradually ate itself and devoured this once magnificent band with it who started it without actually being part of it.
Queensr˙che are still performing largely on the festival circuit and “Operation: Mindcrime” remains a set of wings for them. Icarus wings, sometimes cast from lead. What a magnificent album for all ages and eras. The less said about 2006’s desperate sequel the better …
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