EDIT: Queensryche is now minus Tate. This is both good and bad. With Tate gone, maybe the band can finally get back on track. On the second hand, he was one of the leading forces during the glory days and the rest of the band members seem to be a bit lost without a guiding hand ala their original guitarist Chris DeGarmo.

http://www.billboard.com/news#/news/exc ... 1752.story

New edit:

Sounds nice, let's hope they can still write some good songs.

Fuck yes. Maybe someone from Queensryche does have some musical value left in him after all. Todd La Torre rules, though Crimson Glory should be the one recording an album.

Here's hoping they can put out some excellent studio material. Just hope they don't limit themselves to being a pale Queensryche imitation. While I wouldn't mind hearing a throwback to their golden years, I'd like for them to do it with a sense of integrity.

I think they are. He released a statement saying that he wasn't leaving CG and that they're working on a new album.

Oh yeah, just more great news. And Todd's working on a solo album that sounds pretty good, too.

I'm only a fan of the debut EP, but I will check this side band out.

Now if only they'd leave Tate and let Queensryche die, the world would be a better place.

I don't know if you are serious or not, but this is a chance to elaborate on my previous post. I find Queensryche-after-the-EP output very boring. But I got to say that Tate is a pretty darn good singer.

This is good news, although if they wanted to do something like this earlier they could have.

Let's not pretend Geoff Tate is some kind of villain. He's been very clear that Metal is not gospel to him. That's not his fault. It's his taste in music.

This I cannot understand. Seriously?

What Rafikki said about post-EP Queensryche is sort of how I feel. The debut EP was great, and the first two albums had some good stuff, but were pretty hit-or-miss overall. But everything after "Rage for Order" (including "Operation Mindcrime" and "Empire") was pretty...meh. I mean, I get what they were going for; that bombastic, hard-rock opera type feel, but it just didn't do it for me. Not that it wasn't good, but...just not my thing really. I respect it more than I enjoy it. If this new project were to try to re-create the type of material Queensryche did early on, I might be tempted to check it out but somehow I'm not really expecting too much.

I thought they peaked as a Metal act with Warning, not the EP.

They experimented with Rage for Order, and perfected it with Operation Mindcrime.

Then they went downhill.

Oh well

I guess I just can't understand excluding everything AFTER THE EP.

The EP was great and all, but their later work had so much more depth and creativity. So much more.

Exactly what I meant by my joke.

Looking forward to this new project either way.

Here we go again with the post-Empire Queensryche bashing. I have all their albums and have enjoyed a great deal of what they've done over the last two decades. I would be interested to hear this though.

Seconded. Dedicated To Chaos was just wrong on so many levels and Geoff Tate's antics are starting to eclipse Dave Mustaine in their douchebaggery. Let's just hope the other guys can come up with something awesome though I do wonder how Parker got involved in this. He is Tate's son-in-law, after all...

Tate's daughter is divorced from him. Seems like its a case of having a guy who knows the songs already.

Taste in music or no, Operation Mindcrime is leagues more interesting than the stuff they've done since. The fact that the rest of the guys are going "screw Tate, we want to focus on that earlier style again" is promising. And the dude from CG who is not Midnight is pretty good, so I believe this not-Queensryche-mark-II should be worth remembering when they get around to releasing something. Hell, I'll go to the concert if they come by Chicago. This sounds cool.

So, is this confirmation that the main reason Queensryche suck so bad these days is Geoff Tate? Because I'd love to hear another album in the vein of The Warning.

Edit: And if it is, and the other members want to play metal, then the question must be asked, why the fuck did they put up with this shit for so long? This should have happened years ago.

Blaming Tate for everything just seems to me like a huge cop out from people who simply can't write interesting music anymore.

YES! I've been saying this for years! They put up with Geoff's artistic bullshit for too long. We've lost Queensryche but now we have a hope that this will make up for it! I'm super excited!

Guess I'll just have to point out the obvious omission, as futile as it is:

Convince Chris DeGarmo to get involved, and I'll gladly anoint them Queensrÿche proper myself.

I just edited some things on the Queensryche page and in all the pictures I found the band members look sad as can be. Grizzled old men that have nothing left to gain being in Queensryche. The band looks like an older, soulless version of Unisonic by the pictures now. What hurts the most is that this band is from where I born and raised. I could literally go to the place where that first EP was recorded.

It's weird how strongly invested I am in seeing the downfall of Queensryche.

No, I find it funny how you put it. I would say I wanted Queensryche to have disbanded back in the '90s. The way you worded it sounds better.

Nah, I am too. They're an atrocity. The musical equivalent of everything you believe in slowly dying.

I wonder how Tate feels about this. Isn't this basically the rest of the band admitting everything after Empire is inferior and that Geoff Tate is holding them back? You're forming a separate band to play your own stuff with a different singer... Sounds like it'd just be too big of a pain in the ass to kick him out and they're going around him.

I don't know. Seems like they let Tate (and external songwriters? WTF) take the reins because his direction did, after all, make them quite a bit of money. This band is their job now, it's how they pay their bills and so on. This new entity won't be like that, I expect. If they haven't been having much fun over the past fifteen years (more or less arbitrary), I feel pretty sorry for them, but on the other hand they could quit whenever they wanted to. Chris DeGarmo did, after all.

And some people don't seem to get that the reason people bash later Queensryche has nothing to do with it not being metal. I certainly enjoyed some of the tracks on Promised Land, and at least half that album was pretty laid back. Seems like their last gasp to me; I even like it more than Empire. New stuff is just bad in all conceivable respects.

Everyone always forgets Tribe and how cool it was.

the band is basically run by geoff and susan tate. most musical decisions lie in the hands of geoff and his team of external writers. as abominatrix said, this incarnation of queensryche post-degarmo is the band members' job/livelihood. no new album, no matter how bad it is = no new album to tour on = diminishing crowds to hear "empire" and a poorly sung version of "take hold of the flame".

fwiw I want to see how this turns out - wouldn't surprise me if they come out rippin like 1983 queensryche. seems like all the band members have wanted to stay with the metal direction but geoff cannot stand metal and as such he wants to play rock opera bullshit. can anyone tell me that mindcrime ii was necessary?

I've never heard the newer Queensryche stuff, so in the interest of science and all that good stuff, I listened to several parts of Operation Mindcrime 2. Being a huge fan of the original, I thought this would be the best place to start. I must expand on a previous statement, I've not heard anything past Empire (and I liked parts of that).

What the hell happened this band. What the hell happened to Tate's voice. This side project can only be a good thing.

I remember when Mindcrime 2 was just released and on commercials here in Washington (not sure how broadcasting works nationwide) but anyway they were on with their music video "I'm American" and holy shit was it bad. The song sucks ass, so I got to the local music store to hear the album in full (was there for Immortal or something I can't remember) but I go to hear a few more songs and it was terrible. An awful wussy tough-rock album with dry presentation and no soul. If this new band, with their bad name "Rising West", ends up making something credible, then I'll at least be happier than I am now. Q2K, Mindcrime 2, and American Soldier especially are dogshit.

For us soldiers, American Soldier is a travesty. Empyreal put it well in his review of how it's fine and dandy to support the troops. Lovely, but we would never want THAT album to be the poster child for patriotism. Holy shit.

Beings with souls could not have written and recorded "Wot We Do." At least not without hysterically laughing or choking on the inevitable reflex vomit that spewed forth with its completion.

dead man's words is literally the only song I can remember from american soldier, everything else was pretty horrid. mindcrime ii had one or two good tracks on it but again everything else was fucking horrid.

Mindcrime II at least had "The Hands" and "The Chase."

Epic Mega wootles! I hope it sounds like 'American Soilder" that one was a triumph of metal.

I still fucking love Q2K, Tribe and American Soldier. Haters gonna hate.

Not sure if intense sarcasm, or complete insanity.

Or just genuinely enjoying the music. What, is only one opinion allowed on this band?

No, it's just that it reaches a level of shittiness that is so intense, I can't fathom how a non masochistic human being could derive any enjoyment from it.