Resurrection

Ladies and Gentlemen, the unimaginable actually happened! Geoff Tate and his band actually released an album that has reached a level to be listenable from beginning to the end! Well, it's not really fancy, or anywhere special, but goddamnit, we have really decent rock songs here that will be able to pleasure your ears.

Again, as the last album, the intro isn't quite interesting. And the worse problem is that Resurrection this time has four intros followed up. From the intro Resurrection to Through The Noize in time, you have some electronic noise and repeated screams from Geoff Tate. Well, it's unusual, but at least not totally crappy as Choices from the last one. I still don't get why they have split this intro in 4 parts.

From that part on I have no reason to make any fun about Geoff Tate anymore, because Left For Dead has turned out to be such a good and catchy rock song that from that part on I really started to enjoy the album. Operation: Mindcrime were able to create variety on this album. After this killer track, you have the chilly Miles Away, and this is followed up by the slower Healing My Wounds that reminded me of the best parts from The Key.

As if this wasn't enough, Operation: Mindcrime got even better - The Fight is a quite impressive half-ballad and as if this wasn't enough, I was totally blown away by Taking On The World. I guess if this title had been on the shitty albums of Tate, I would have punched him in the face for violating the name of a great Judas Priest song, but this one turned out to be a great 6 minute rocker. Unfortunately his guest singers, Blaze Bayley and Tim Owens can't be heard that much on this song, and also they only got one line to sing each. That's really frustrating for a fan of these two guys. But here they actually had everything you needed for a great rock song. Hard riffs, solo and variety within the song. From that moment on I actually thought that Operation: Mindcrime couldn't do anything wrong anymore.

Well, I was right, they didn't do anything wrong actually, but they also let a bit down after this. From that song on they decided to play more longass songs and having the Iron Maiden syndrome, meaning that you write 2 minute songs and needlessly stretch it longer and longer is just the dumbest idea you could have. Listen to Smear Campaign and you'll get it. At least they go on with guitar solo over guitar solo instead of just repeating guitar riffs again and again. Invincible, Smear Campaign and the following songs Which Side Are You On and Into The Hands Of The World are just glamorous songs written by OMC. You don't listen to any riff twice, you have twists and turns even within the songs, the artists perfectly play together, there are good synths, powerful riffs and the best is, some of the songs even have climaxes and other parts that make these songs keep in your mind.

Unfortunately, Live From My Machine is quite disappointing after the great work OMC did before. After the majestic riff in the beginning you find hear more that stupid singing and pointless guitar noise that just doesn't make anything to keep your interest as the songs before did.

In the end I still just want to congratulate Geoff Tate for having finally achieved to write a good album again after years. I can't wait to listen to the third album and I really pray to God that Geoff Tate won't fuck it up after this one.