Live Review: Queensrÿche

Queensrÿche, Manchester Academy, 4 June 2006.

Sunday night saw the second of my three concerts in five days. This was Queensrÿche's Mindcrime II show at the Manchester Academy. They'd played low down the bill at the Monsters of Rock festival on the Saturday, and Sunday's Manchester gig was their only British headline show.

Queensrÿche are an extreme case of a band peaking early. Their third release, the 1988 concept album, "Operation Mindcrime" is rightly regarded as a masterpiece of progressive metal. The followup, "Empire", was much more commercial but still packed a punch. After reaching that stage, most bands either hit a lengthy plateau or split up. Queensrÿche did neither. Instead they released a string of mediocre albums culminating in the dismal downtuned alternative rock sludge of "Q2K". They'd become a pale shadow of their former selves.

Sensing that they'd hit rock bottom, they decided to revisit their past, and release a followup to that classic concept album. "Operation Mindcrime II" picks up the story twenty years later. Musically it's not a patch on it's legendary predecessor, although it wasn't anything like as dire as "Q2K".

Support was Roadstar, the band formerly know as Hurricane Party. They played a great half hour set of conventional but entertaining 80s-style hair metal. Let's party like it's 1987!

When Queensrÿche took the stage, my first reaction was "They look like U2". Geoff Tate in dark glasses looked like Bono, with bassist Ed Jackson in the hat resembling The Edge, and Michael Wilton looking a bit like Adam Clayton. Only when Geoff removed the dark glasses he then looked like The Office's David Brent.

For much of the set they were joined by guest vocalist Pamela Moore. She had played the part of hooker-turned-nun Sister Mary on the original album and reprised the role (as a ghost) on the followup. As well as the parts she sang on the records, she added a lot of backing vocals throughout the set. In songs like "Spreading the Disease" and "Operation Mindcrime" itself, she sang many of Geoff Tate's lines, perhaps an indiction that Tate's voice doesn't have the awesome range of 20 years ago.

The Mindcrime II tour was billed as the two albums played back to back. I had some misgivings about this, fearing that the weaker "II" songs would make the second half a bit of an anticlimax. But the 90 minute set meant that they didn't play the whole of the two albums. They played all of the original "Mindcrime" bar 'The Mission', 'Breaking the Silence', and the instrumentals, but only half of the weaker sequel. They moved the closing number of the original Mindcrime, 'Eyes of the Stranger' to the end of the set, which balanced things out a bit.

The quality was a bit variable. Opener 'Revolution Calling' sounded a bit thin, but the energy levels picked up considerably as the set progressed. The high spot was a theatrical version of "Suite Sister Mary", a reminder that Pamela Moore was trained as an actress before becoming a singer. The hit 'I Don't Believe In Love' was a pretty powerful version as well.

For encores, they played a couple of numbers from "Empire", the title track, and a decidedly messy version of 'Jet City Woman'. Then they annoyed the audience by waiting for ages before turning on the house lights, making us think they were coming back for a third encore, since there were still ten minutes to go before curfew.

I've since read a really bad review of their performance at Monsters of Rock the day before. I don't think they were anything like that bad in Manchester, but it was definitely a case of good rather than great.