BOOK REPORT BELOW!!!
tl;dr: I really, really love Queensryche.
I was raised on Ryche the same way I was raised on Floyd. I was born in ‘82 and both my uncle and father were
huge fans of that EP and everything that followed. I remember when they did “Silent Lucidity” on the VMA’s, my dad said “Right after you were born your uncle came bursting into the apartment with their first tape and kept turning up the stereo, I was getting pissed because I thought he’d wake you up but you were always good at sleeping through loud music” And much like I bonded with dad with Floyd, Ryche was another bonding band for us. Especially when it came to Mindcrime.
I was immediately attracted to the Floyd-like aspects of “Silent Lucidity” then, that was right as I really started realizing how much of a connection I had with music, I would have been 8 or 9. I snagged all my dad’s tapes and haven’t gone longer than a year or so without listening to a few of those albums since.
I’m very partial to Rage For Order, that album is so far ahead of it’s time it’s ridiculous. The use of electronics and loops on that album is something that didn’t sneak it’s way into metal until Fear Factory, Strapping Young Lad, Sevendust, Korn, etc started doing it in the 90’s. Really, I love every album up to Promised Land fairly equally. For years I said Promised Land and RFO were my favorites but man, any album that has f*cking “Roads To Madness” on it is a banger of an album. Man, now I’m gonna listen to Ryche for the rest of the night and not get anything done…
Something I always thought was interesting was how so many people dropped off with Promised Land but they were all there from the beginning through
Empire. I don‘t feel I’m out of line saying that’s their Def Leppard album, especially with stuff like “Hand On Heart” and “Jet City Woman”. Especially coming from Mindcrime! I guess it’s just a testament of how great those songs are and that production…..man.
This is another band for me that I’ve taken influence from each member and not just a guitar player. When I was in high school I started trying to sing these songs…..
My best friend still busts my balls for trying to sound like Geoff Tate so much back then and my god I can just imagine how bad that sounded. We did “Empire” in a band when we were 15 and I “sang” it. While I long lost the interest to sing in such a perfectly clean and operatic voice, there’s a lot I still snag from him, the inflection and the vibrato. I
love his vibrato and the way choices he makes within phrases. My ex called it the “high school drama club voice” …fair enough. I love everything about that dude’s voice up until 1996. Him and Layne Staley are my original vocal heroes and it wasn’t until years later I found out they studied under the same vocal coach and utilize the same vocal techniques.
Scott’s cymbal/ride work that’s really unique to him, I try to throw that stuff in a song whenever I can, Ed’s bass tone is probably 75% of the reason I got a Spector. The guitars, it’s an endless well of awesome sh*t in there, they could write single-note riffs and base a song around them or a standard chord progression song and make it badass either way, the harmonies and the amount of space they gave the songs to breath, those rippin’ Marshall tones…..just the complete package all around.
I’ll save some other thoughts (I got plenty more) for when the albums pop up in the thread. This is a bit much.
