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Queensrÿche > Dedicated to Chaos > Reviews > The_Ghoul
Queensrÿche - Dedicated to Chaos

Insulting to the brand - 21%

The_Ghoul, November 19th, 2016

There are times where the creative dissociation of most of the band can produce good results (like Emperor's Prometheus: Discipline of Fire and Demise album) but Queensryche's Dedicated to Chaos is not one of them. A few key differences can be plotted out, which could explain my distaste for this album. One is that Ihsahn of Emperor is a talented composer, competent musician, and proficient in the studio as well. On the other hand, the team responsible for composing this album, Geoff Tate the singer, the guitarist they brought on board to replace Chris DeGarmo, Mike Stone, producer Jason Slater and engineer Kelly Gray, do not have any such composition skills. They're an alright production team (the production sounds like Q2K but with a heavier guitar sound). In a way, this album is dishonest in that fashion because this is more a Geoff Tate solo album with guest work by Scott Rockenfeld, rather than a proper Queensryche effort. And this definitely comes across in the music. When Geoff isn't mindlessly spouting on about modern "wired" culture, he's showing the world why people who sing should lay off the marlboros.

Herein lies another key difference between the aforementioned Ihsahn and Tate: Ihsahn wasn't a naturally talented singer (listen to Emperor's older stuff to hear why) but practiced a bunch and took care of his voice, and his voice grew more and more solid. Tate, on the other hand, peaked in the late 80's/early 90's and has clearly been getting breathier and wheezier since. He cannot hit any of his old high notes, not that it would be appropriate in the music here, which ranges from light "basic bro" rock to attempts at hamming Lenny Kravitz's sound to other hackneyed bits from the outer orbits of 90's pop culture, which Tate has some really strange fascination with. As well, his voice has developed a weird sneer behind it, which upon further inspection is just a wheezing sort of sound, as the note peters off into breathiness. As such, the music isn't particularly demanding on Tate's voice, and for being the star of the show in the mix isn't particularly interesting or spectacular.

The meat and bones of this album is nothing spectacular, of course. If you're familiar with Queensryche's long, painful decay from the late 90's until recently, you know the sound: basic drum beats with stock riffs. That's your formula. Not even Hear in the Now Frontier, really. We're talking the worst of Tribe and Q2K put into an album, with a few inane pop culture asteroids plunking into the sound that sound fake and relegate this to beyond third-tier status. Nobody shines here, and I get the feeling the music was the last consideration in making this. Tate's underwhelming and intermittently annoying performance, the stock and useless guitars, the bass that's just... there. I suspect it's not even done by Jackson, the liner notes be damned. The drums, also, are basic 4x4 beats throughout the album that keep the beat, yes, but don't push the music forward at all, and this all adds up to one massively bloated album that's pretty much unlistenable.

I mean, what could possibly be this album's audience? Certainly the audience isn't the most important consideration when writing music, but who would consider this good? The far lot of this album is Tate at his most commercial friendly, and I would assume that would put off most of Queensryche's older fanbase. I can't imagine that fans of pop music proper would like this, as Tate's aging and weary voice can't deliver the pounding hooks today's teens and tweens are used to, and the music isn't even all that catchy to be honest anyway. Perhaps I could ask, what is this album's objective? Because other than an exercise in production values, I can't imagine Dedicated to Chaos is doing anything particularly well.