QUEEN

Review Nº 767

"Made In Heaven" is the fifteenth studio album of Queen and was released in 1995, four years after the dead of Freddie Mercury. This is the last album from the band to feature vocals from him when he was alive. However, after Freddie Mercury's dead in 1991, the remaining members of Queen have worked with previously recorded vocals and piano parts that Freddie recorded before he passed away, along with newly recorded lyrics by the remaining band's members, to create another new studio album. It included two songs, with a new musical arrangement of Freddie Mercury's solo album, "Mr. Bad Guy" and "I Was Born To Love You", and "Made In Heaven". The song "My Life Has Been Saved" has a version launched in 1989, the compact with the song "Scandal" released on their thirteenth studio album "The Miracle".

Prior to its release, some critics thought Queen were cashing in. Instead, Queen wrote the perfect final chapter to an amazing career. Some fans were disappointed in the 80's and some new fans were introduced in the 80's. Still, "Made in Heaven" is an album that won't disappoint, whether you're a fan of the 70's hard rock or the 80's pop rock, indeed.

"Made In Heaven" has officially, eleven tracks. The first track "It's A Beautiful Day" written by Queen and Freddie Mercury is a nice song, where the vocals and piano sounds beautifully. This is a good song to introduce the album. The second track "Made In Heaven" written by Freddie Mercury was originally from his solo album "Mr. Bad Guy". This is a version which was given a special treatment to sounds more like a Queen's song. I think this is a better version than the original. The third track "Let Me Live" written by Queen is a rock ballad that features vocals from Freddie Mercury, Brian May and Roger Taylor. It was completed after Freddie Mercury's dead. It's a good song that sounds to the early Queen's sound. The fourth track "Mother Love" written by Freddie Mercury and Brian May was the final song co-written by both, and was also Freddie Mercury's last vocal performance. It's a good and beautiful song with sad and depressing lyrics that notice that he knew perfectly well that he was going to die soon. The fifth track "My Life Has Been Saved" written by Queen and John Deacon is, in my humble opinion, one of the weakest songs on the album. However, it remains a good and enjoyable song to hear. The sixth track "I Was Born To Love You" written by Freddie Mercury, was another song originally recorded for his solo album "Mr. Bad Guy". After he passed away, the band remixed it and added instrumentation, turning it into a fast rock song. This is a good and nice song to hear. The seventh track "Heaven For Everyone" written by Roger Taylor is a beautiful and sentimental track. Despite be a song taken from Roger Taylor's album "The Cross", this version sounds as a Queen's song. The eighth track "Too Much Love Will Kill You" written by Brian May, Frank Musker and Elizabeth Lamers is one of the highlights on the album. It was initially made for "The Miracle", but it was never released. Later, Brian May recorded it for his debut solo album "Back To The Light". This is a nice song that I like very much. The ninth track "You Don't Fool Me" written by Queen was one of the last songs to be recorded for the album. It isn't a very good song. It sounds too much to funky and disco and has nothing to do with the Queen's sound. It's a bit dated in our days. The tenth track "A Winter's Tale" written by Queen and Freddie Mercury is a beautiful song. It was the last song composed solely by Freddie Mercury and was recorded two weeks before his dead. The eleventh track "It's A Beautiful Day (Reprise)", as its name says is the reprise of the first song. It's a better version than the first one. It has new and different musical arrangements and a heavier rock piece of music at the end of it.

The CD also features two tracks that aren't presented on the data shed of the album. The twelfth track "Yeah" is an excerpt from "It's a Beautiful Day (Reprise)", where Freddie Mercury shouts "Yeah" that has no more than 4 seconds. The thirteenth track is a light track, where hardly we can hear anything because is recorded too much low. Its name was never mentioned, but some says is called "Mystique". It symbolizes the passing of Freddie Mercury to the Paradise.

Conclusion: I can see some parallelism between "Made In Heaven" and "An American Prayer" of The Doors, despite being two completely different musical proposals. As many of you know, both albums were released with some material recorded by both artists before their dead, and were released by the remaining members of both bands, after they died. Relatively to "Made In Heaven", and musically speaking, we are in presence of a great album, with songs like "Made In Heaven", "I Was Born To Love You", "Heaven For Everyone" and "Too Much Love Will Kill You", which did our delights, while we drove our cars and listened the car radio, instead of having to listen some kind of pop music without any kind of quality and imagination. So, "Made In Heaven" probably should be rated with 4 stars. However, I have a problem in doing that. In the first place, its music hasn't any kind of progressivity and we are on a progressive site. In the second place, I rated "Queen", "Sheer Heart Attack", "A Day At The Races" and "Innuendo" with 4 stars. Thus, it would be unfair to give the same rating to it too. So, the right thing to do is to rate "Made In Heaven" with 3 solid stars, really.

Prog is my Ferrari. Jem Godfrey (Frost*)

Almost at the end of the 80's, Queen released "The Miracle", their thirteenth album, in a scenario in which there were still rumours about a probable break-up of the band and incipient speculations about Freddie Mercury's health. An optimistic and emotionally intense album, adapted to the sonorities of those times, it shows the Englishmen cohesive and committed, and for the first time signing the authorship of all the songs together, in a demonstration of solidarity and unity in the face of the imminent tragic destiny that AIDS had in store for Mercury, the most immortal of mortals.

The festive spirit is present from the start with the extroverted "Party" and "Khashoggi's Ship", where the lively melodies are dominated by Brian May's powerful guitar riffs and Mercury's energy on vocals, a spirit that is maintained in the galloping and groundbreaking "Breakthru" with its operatic reminiscence and John Deacon's bass leading the melody.

The more serious and reflective vein comes with the hard-rocking "I Want It All", one of the band's last anthems with May again in the lead role, the conciliatory "The Miracle", the album's eponymous title track and its conscious anti-war pronouncement, and the denouncing "Scandal" and its critique of the sensationalism of the gossip press with May on keyboards, a heartfelt and brief guitar solo and Deacon's persistent bass lines.

And if "Rain Must Fall" as well as "My Baby Does Me" are failed expressions that don't seem to make much sense in the overall context of the album (the bonus tracks on the CD release, "Hang on in There" and May's solo on the instrumental "Chinese Torture" would have fit much better), the imposing, at times orchestrated and at times raspingly brilliant forcefulness of the superb "Was It All Worth It" with a confessional and heartbreaking Mercury, brings the album to a stupendous close.

"The Miracle", which didn't have a promotional tour due to the singer's illness, even though initially it was argued that he was tired and fed up with the album-tour cycle, was probably the best work of the English band in the 80's.

3/3.5 stars

Queen's legendary performance at "Live Aid" encouraged the band to return to the recording studios, and after two years of uncertainty about the band's continuity, they finally released "A Kind of Magic", their twelfth album, in 1986.

Best known for being the album that prompted what would end up being the band's last tour with Freddie Mercury and immortalised on 1992's "Live at Wembley", "A Kind of Magic" is made up of a handful of songs, many of which formed part of the soundtrack for the film "Highlander" and complemented by a few party rock songs, making up a hybrid mosaic that never quite came together as a unit.

The auspicious "One Vision", an energetic piece from start to finish, the festive and chanting rock of "Friends Will be Friends", the orchestrated and slightly cloying emotionality of "Who Wants to Live Forever" and the rocky forcefulness of "Princes of the Universe", the best track on the album by far, make up the album's most successful passages; and on the other hand, as a counterpart, the accessible "A Kind of Magic" of unthinkable vitality live, and tracks that do not fit in with the band's history and do not add much value, beyond the experimentations that Mercury was always so prone to, such as the soporific soul "One Year of Love" with sax included, "Pain is so Close to Pleasure" in Motown style, or the confused "Don't Lose Your Head".

Despite this unsynchronised duality, "A Kind of Magic" is a loveable album by Queen, who at that point in their career had already passed all the tests they had been subjected to for years, and hence its rating is always associated more with the emotional elements it generated than with an objective evaluation (if one can speak of objectivity in a matter of taste...).

2.5/3 stars

Freddie Mercury's undisguised intentions to experiment with the pop and disco sounds so in vogue in the early 80's found their initial point of intersection in "The Game", Queen's eighth album. A work that features the novel use of synthesizers, thus putting an end to the hitherto proud motto of not including synthesizers, frequently stated on the back covers or inner packaging of the band's previous albums. A detail that did not go unnoticed, and a clear sign that new winds were blowing on the horizon.

The agile and synthesized "Play the Game" serves as a starting point for a general tone that runs between playful and accessible rhythmic developments, such as the mega funky hit "Another One Bites The Dust" with John Deacon's catchy bass, or the entertaining rockabilly "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and Mercury's rudimentary guitar strumming, or the hurried "Need Your Loving Tonight" and "Coming Soon", contrasted with the splashes of hard rock vein of "Dragon Attack" and Brian May's intense riff and sinuous guitar solo. On the other hand, the band's ever-present mellow feel appears in the last section of the album, with the beautiful "Sail Away Sweet Sister" and May's plaintive singing, but especially with the fragility of "Save Me" and the luminous piano/guitar blend of Mercury and May, stamping one of the band's great ballads.

The release of "The Game" generated controversy and some grimaces of non-conformity among the more purist fans of Queen's early days, but at the same time allowed the Brits to continue exponentially expanding their refreshed musical approach to an increasingly receptive international market.

3 stars

The constant need of the brilliant Freddie Mercury and his bandmates not to repeat themselves and to continue exploring new territories, led them to leave aside the development of intricate pieces characterised by an endless number of superimposed layers of voices and guitars, whose maximum expression was the everlasting "A Night at the Opera" and, to a lesser extent, "A Day at the Races". With "News of the World", their sixth album, Queen focused on more direct songs, embracing different musical styles and less complex sonic textures, in a clear demonstration of their versatility and lack of risk-taking.

From the minimalist and powerful "We Will Rock You" and the timeless anthem "We Are the Champions", created to be part of the interaction with the audience at concerts, the album contains a handful of dissimilar pieces with no apparent connection, such as the sensitive ballad "All Dead, All Dead" sung by guitarist Brian May, the singular "Sheer Heart Attack" and its proto punk airs loaded with saturated guitars, the sexualised "Get Down, Make Love", the warm bluesy reminiscence of "Sleeping on the Sidewalk", the fun "Who Needs You" with its frugal Caribbean tune with bassist John Deacon taking charge of the acoustic guitars, or the hard-rocking "It's Late", one of the heaviest and most intense pieces in the band's catalogue, where May takes the lead role with powerful guitar riffs backed by Roger Taylor's raw percussion. And the collage represented by "News of the World" is completed by the sleepy "My Melancholic Blues", a meditative, jazz-influenced rendition, sung by Mercury alone accompanied by his piano, in late-night bar mode.

While the stratospheric success of the double A-side single ("We Will Rock" / "We Are the Champions") took most of the spotlight, the rest of the album's tracks maintained a considerable compositional level and instrumental quality. With "News of the World", a new era was about to dawn for the Brits: stadium rock.

3/3.5 stars

Review Nº 707

"Forever" is a compilation of Queen released in 2014 with tracks from almost all their studio albums with the exception of their eponymous debut and "Flash Gordon". It has one track from "Queen II", three from "Sheer Heart Attack", three from "A Night At The Opera", four from "A Day At The Races", one from "News Of The World", one from "Jazz", four from "The Game", one from "Hot Space", two from "The Works", three from "A Kind Of Magic", one from "The Miracle", three from "Innuendo" and five from "Made In Heaven". It has also two non- album's tracks and two Mercury's tracks.

"Forever" has thirty-six tracks. "Nevermore" is from "Queen II". It's a short nice piano ballad with tempo changes that appear a couple of times. "Dear Friends", "Lily Of The Valley" and "In The Lap Of The Gods..." are from "Sheer Heart Attack". "Dear Friends" is a short ballad with piano and voice. It's beautiful and sad. "Lily Of The Valley" is a short song with a beautiful melody. "In The Lap Of The Gods..." is a strange piece with great changes on vocals. It has a great piano work. "You're My Best Friend", "Love Of My Life" and "'39" are from "A Night At The Opera". "You're My Best Friend" is a beautiful and catchy song with nice harmonies. "Love Of My Life" is a beautiful and catchy ballad, probably one of the best I've heard. "'39" is a nice acoustic ballad with great guitar work and beautiful harmonies. "Drowse", "You Take My Breath Away", "Long Away" and "Somebody To Love" are from "A Day At The Races". "Drowse" is a nice song, but it's nothing more than that. "You Take My Breath Away" is a lovely ballad, a mellow piano number with a great vocal performance by Mercury. "Long Away" is a beautiful and pleasant song with great vocals from Mercury and Taylor. "Somebody To Love" has complex harmonies, great guitar solos and a nice gospel choir. "Spread Your Wings" is from "News Of The World". It's a nice rock ballad with good guitar harmonies. "Jealousy" is from "Jazz". It's a typical ballad with a great vocal work and a nice acoustic guitar playing. "Play The Game", "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", "Save Me" and "Sail Away Sweet Sister" are from "The Game". "Play The Game" is a powerful, nice and an emotional ballad. "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" is a nice song that sounds to the 50's. It was a nice tribute to Elvis. "Save Me" is a great song with touching and beautiful lyrics, nice harmonies and a great guitar work. "Sail Away Sweet Sister" is an acoustic ballad, one of the best and most beautiful compositions by May. "Las Palabras De Amor" is from "Hot Space". It's a rock ballad nicely sung with good acoustic guitar work and a nice synthesizer performance. "It's A Hard Life" and "Is This The World We Created...?" are from "The Works". "It's A Hard Life" is an excellent song with a simple structure and a beautiful melody. "Is This The World We Created...?" is a nice acoustic ballad made for the acoustic guitar of May and the voice of Mercury. "Who Wants To Live Forever", "Friends Will Be Friends" and "One Year Of Love" are from "A Kind Of Magic". "Who Wants To Live Forever" is one of their most emotional ballads. "Friends Will Be Friends" is a beautiful song with good lyrics, one of the most well known Queen's songs. "One Year Of Love" is a nice calm slow ballad with a beautiful saxophone solo work and great string orchestral arrangements. "The Miracle" is from "The Miracle". It's a creative song with complex musical arrangements. "Don't Try So Hard", "Bijou" and "These Are The Days Of Our Lives" are from "Innuendo". "Don't Try So Hard" is a great ballad, one of their most beautiful. "Bijou" is an enjoyable song, mostly a guitar solo piece. "These Are The Days Of Our Lives" is an emotional song. It's the last farewell of Mercury. "I Was Born To Love You", "A Winter's Tale", "Mother Love", "Made In Heaven" and "Too Much Love Will Kill You" are from "Made In Heaven". "I Was Born To Love You" is a nice song to hear. "A Winter's Tale" is a nice song, the last song composed solely by Mercury recorded two weeks before his dead. "Mother Love" is a good and beautiful song with sad and depressing lyrics. "Made In Heaven" is an enjoyable thoughtful good rocking track. "Too Much Love Will Kill You" is a nice song that I like very much. "Let Me In Your Heart Again" and "Forever" are non-album's tracks. "Let Me In Your Heart Again" is a nice single with new arrangements recorded during of "The Works". "Forever" is a piano version of "Who Wants To Live Forever". "Love Kills" and "There Must Be More To Life Than This" are from Mercury. "Love Kills" is a nice song originally used in Giorgio Moroder's film "Metropolis". "There Must Be More To Life Than This" is a Mercury's song from his "Mr. Bad Guy" solo work initially made to "Hot Space".

Conclusion: "Forever" is a good compilation album of Queen that covers practically almost their entire career. Only two of their studio albums aren't represented here, "Queen" and "Flash Gordon". If in the case of "Flash Gordon" that is perfectly understandable because it's a soundtrack album, I cannot say the same about their debut. "Queen" is a great album, one of their best and most progressive works. It has many great tracks that could be part of it, such as, "Great King Rat" and "My Fairy King". Anyway, that couldn't be enough to put "Forever" as a bad compilation. Besides, all tracks recorded on "Forever" were all re-mastered versions. So, this is a nice starting point to begin with this band.

Prog is my Ferrari. Jem Godfrey (Frost*)

Review Nº 696

"The Works" is the eleventh studio album of Queen and that was released in 1984. It became, without any doubt, a partial return to their beginning rock roots, after their previous studio album "Hot Space", although with a much lighter musical approach. It isn't entirely a classic Queen's album, but it's more on the safe ground. It became the heaviest electronic album amongst all their albums too. In comparison with their previous studio album, rock was mostly absent on "Hot Space", which was substituted by dance and funk music, with the massive use of the synthesizers and brass. The band praised the album, saying that they were hoped that it helped re-established the band, especially in Europe.

"The Works" has nine tracks. The first track "Radio Ga Ga" written by Roger Taylor was the first single from the album, with "I Go Crazy" by Brian May, on the B side of the single. The single was a worldwide success from the band, and became as one of the biggest hits of Queen. Lyrically, it's a protest song against the growing influence of music videos on the record sales, against the musical quality itself. Musically, it's an excellent song and probably it became the best song ever written by Roger Taylor to the band. The video for the song, which was directed by David Mallet, was made especially with the additions of scenes of the restored version of Giorgio Moroder's "Metropolis", of Fritz Lang's science fiction movie "Metropolis", made in 1927. The second track "Tear It Up" written by Brian May was the song chosen to be released as the B side of their single "Hammer To Fall". It's completely different from the previous song on the album. It's a hard song in the same vein of some of the old songs of the band. It's clearly a typical Brian May's song. The final result is a nice and good rock song pleasant to hear. The third track "It's A Hard Life" written by Freddie Mercury was a song chosen to be released as the third single of the album, with "Is This The World We Created??" as the B side. It's a song recorded much close to the sound of the earlier Queen's albums in which they didn't use synthesizers. This is an excellent song with a simple musical structure and a beautiful melody. This is, in my opinion, one of the highlights on the album. The fourth track "Man On The Prowl" written by Freddie Mercury is a song that sounds too much close to the rock of the 50's. This is another song written by Freddie Mercury as a tribute to Elvis Presley. It sounds completely different from the rest of the album. As you know, I don't like particularly of the rock of the 50's, and for me, this is one of the weakest songs on the album. The fifth track "Machines (Or 'Back To Humans')" written by Brian May and Roger Taylor was the song released as the B side of their single "I Want To Break Free". It's a very strange song that starts completely electronic and that sounds as a music battle of a future war between humans and machines. It's an interesting rock song with a good musical performance, especially the guitar work of Brian May, which is very pleasant and nice to hear. The sixth track "I Want To Break Free" written by John Deacon was the song chosen as the second single of the album. Curiously, the song had three different versions, album, single and extended version, differing in length and in some factors. It became the second hit single of the album. This is a great song with a catchy melody and an excellent vocal performance. However, this is only a pop song without any kind of progressivity. The seventh track "Keep Passing The Open Windows" written by Freddie Mercury was a song originally written to be part of the film "Hotel New Hampshire" but didn't make part of the final soundtrack of it. It's a good song with a simple musical structure, a beautiful melody and a nice piano performance. The eighth track "Hammer To Fall" written by Brian May was the fourth and final single to be released from the album. The song harks back to Queen's old sound, built around a hard and muscular guitar riff. It became as one of their live favourite songs. Probably, this song became with "It's A Hard Life", the two songs that most of the earlier Queen's fans should better tolerate from this album, because both are almost two classic Queen's songs. The ninth track "Is This The World We Created??" written by Freddie Mercury and Brian May was the B side of their third single, "It's A Hard Life". It's a beautiful acoustic ballad composed only for the acoustic guitar of Brian May and to the voice of Freddie Mercury. This is a nice way to finish the album.

Conclusion: "The Works" is, without any doubt, a good Queen's album with some great and beautiful musical moments. I've no doubt in saying that "The Works" is undoubtedly the best studio album of Queen since their seventh studio album "Jazz". Compared with their previous studio album "Hot Space", we can even say that "The Works" is a real masterpiece. In my humble opinion, this is a very cohesive and balanced album with only one weak song "Man On The Prowl". By the other hand it has some great musical moments, especially "It's A Hard Life" and "Hammer To Fall", which make us remember the good and old Queen's music. The final result is that "The Works" doesn't belong to their best works but it doesn't belong to their worst either. However, like as happened with "Duke" of Genesis, we aren't in presence of a true progressive album. So, I'm going to rate "The Works" with the same 3 stars that I've rated "Duke".

Prog is my Ferrari. Jem Godfrey (Frost*)

Review Nº 680

"Deep Cuts, Volume 3 (1984-1995)" is a compilation of Queen released in 2011. It makes part of a trilogy of compilations of the band released in the same year, which covers some of the best tracks made by Queen during part of their career. As its name indicates, this compilation album is the volume three of that trilogy and only covers tracks between 1984 and 1995. It means that "Deep Cuts, Volume 3 (1984-1995)" has tracks that were originally released on their eleventh studio album "The Works" that was released in 1984, on their twelfth studio album "A Kind Of Magic" that was released in 1986, on their thirteenth studio album "The Miracle" that was released in 1989, on their fourteenth studio album "Innuendo" that was released in 1991 and on their fifteenth studio album "Made In Heaven" that was released in 1995. "Deep Cuts, Volume 3 (1984-1995)" has fifteen tracks. "Made In Heaven" is from "Made In Heaven". It was originally written for Freddie Mercury's solo album "Mr. Bad Guy". This is a version with a different treatment to sounds like a Queen's song. I think this is a better version. "Machines (Or 'Back To Humans')" is from "The Works". It's a strange song that starts completely electronic and that sounds as a music battle of a future world war between humans and machines. This is an interesting rock song with a good performance, especially the guitar work of Brian May, which is pleasant and nice to hear. "Don't Try So Hard" is from "Innuendo". This is a beautiful song, a true amazing song. It's probably the darkest song on that album where Freddie Mercury sings most of the song in falsetto. This is a wonderful ballad, one of their most beautiful ballads. "Tear It Up" is from "The Works". It's a hard song in the same vein of some of the old songs of the band. It's clearly a typical Brian May's song. The final result is a nice and good rock song very pleasant to hear. "I Was Born To Love You" is from "Made In Heaven". It was a song originally recorded to Freddie Mercury's solo album "Mr. Bad Guy". After he passed away, the band remixed it and added instrumentation, turning it into a fast rock song. This is a good and nice song. "A Winter's Tale" is also from "Made In Heaven". It's a beautiful song. It was the last song composed solely by Freddie Mercury and that was recorded two weeks before his dead. Noticeably, all the vocals were done in only a single take. This is a great track with nice atmosphere greatly maintained throughout the all song. "Ride The Wild Wind" is from "Innuendo". This is a good rock song with great rhythm and a delicious choral work. It's really a great song, one of the best compositions made by Roger Taylor to the band. "Bijou" is also from "Innuendo". This is essentially a guitar solo piece song. It's a good and enjoyable song where Freddie Mercury sings beautifully, as is usual, and Brian May proves that he is a great guitarist. "Was It All Worth It" is from "The Miracle". This is an excellent song. It's one of the best and the only progressive song on that album. It's a song with great moments that reminds the good old Queen. It closes that album perfectly well with beauty. "One Year Of Love" is from "A Kind Of Magic". It's a nice and calm slow ballad with a beautiful saxophone solo work and a great string orchestral arrangement. It isn't one of the best Queen's songs, but it has quality enough to be considered a good song. "Khashoggi's Ship" is from "The Miracle". This is a rock song with no instrumental overdubs. Despite be a good song, it's a bit repetitive song without much creativity and imagination. Still, this is a killing nice rock tune. "Is This The World We Created...?" is from "The Works". It's a beautiful acoustic ballad composed only for the acoustic guitar of Brian May and to the voice of Freddie Mercury. This is a nice way to finish their album "The Works". "The Hitman" is from "Innuendo". This is one of the hard rock songs on "Innuendo". It's a heavy song, very fast and aggressive. This is the heaviest song on that album and is interesting and enjoyable to hear. "It's A Beautiful Day (Reprise)" is from "Made In Heaven". As it name says, it's the reprise of the first song on that album. It's better than the first song on that album. It has new and different arrangements and a heavier rock piece at the end of it. "Mother Love" is also from "Made In Heaven". It was written by Brian May and recorded in Montreaux in 1991. It was Freddie's last vocal performance. It's a very good and beautiful song with sad and depressing lyrics that notice that he knew he was going to die very soon. Conclusion: "Deep Cuts, Volume 3 (1984-1995)" is another good compilation of Queen, the third of the three parts of their compilations "Deep Cuts". "Deep Cuts" covers the entire career of the band when Freddie Mercury was a member of the band. This last one covers the career of the band between 1984 and 1995, the years where Queen released their last five studio albums with Freddie Mercury, "The Works", "A Kind Of Magic", "The Miracle", "Innuendo" and "Made In Heaven". Thus, we have three songs from "The Works", one song from "A Kind Of Magic", two songs from "The Miracle", four songs from "Innuendo" and five songs from "Made In Heaven". So, we can say that all songs chosen to be part of this compilation album are good, especially the songs from "Innuendo". So, this is a good compilation album.

Prog is my Ferrari. Jem Godfrey (Frost*)

Review Nº 676

"Deep Cuts, Volume 2 (1977-1982)" is a compilation album of Queen that was released in 2011. It makes part of a trilogy from the band that was released in the same year, which covers some of the best tracks made by Queen during part of their career. As its name indicates, this compilation album is the volume two of that trilogy and only covers tracks between 1977 and 1982. It means that "Deep Cuts, Volume 2 (1977-1982)" has only tracks that were originally recorded on their sixth studio album "News Of The World" that was released in 1977, on their seventh studio album "Jazz" that was released in 1978, on their eighth studio album "The Game" that was released in 1980, on their ninth studio album "Flash Gordon" that was released in 1980 and on their tenth studio album "Hot Space" that was released in 1982.

"Deep Cuts, Volume 2 (1977-1982)" has fourteen tracks. "Mustapha" is from "Jazz". It's a nice tune with an oriental feel. The lyrics, I think, consist of English, Arabic, Persian and certainly a number of invented words. This is an excellent and very extravagant song. "Sheer Heart Attack" is from "News Of The World". It's a heavy punk rock song, probably the heaviest song that Queen ever wrote. It should have been the title track for "Sheer Heart Attack", but they didn't finish it in time. I don't like very much of this song. "Spread Your Wings" is also from "News Of The World". It's a beautiful rock ballad with good guitar harmonies. Here, John Deacon did a good and interesting work, making of it one of his best contributions to Queen. "Sleeping On The Sidewalk" is another song from "News Of The World". It's a bluesy song, mainly played on acoustic guitar. Despite it's a good song and proves that we are in presence of a versatile band, this isn't one of the best Brian May's songs. "It's Late" is one more song from "News Of The World". It's one of the best moments on "News Of The World". This is a classic rock Queen's song with excellent melody and great individual performances by all band's members. "Rock It (Prime Jive)" is from "The Game". It's a fast rock song with a good guitar solo and a nice chorus. This is a typical Roger Taylor's song, decent enough, but I can't see anything special on it. It's sung by him with an introduction vocalization by Freddie Mercury. "Dead On Time" is from "Jazz". This is a good rock song, with good lyrics, great guitar parts and complex melodies. It's an ultra-fast pace song that sounds like a hard rock song must sound. It shows how heavy Queen could be when they wanted to be. "Sail Away Sweet Sister" is from "The Game". It's an acoustic ballad, probably the real gem on "The Game". This is one of the best and most beautiful compositions written by Brian May. It's a lovely song with prog lines made in the good old Queen's style. "Dragon Attack" is also from "The Game". It's a song with a good bass line and an interesting drumming work, with a solo in the middle of it. It's a hard rock song with funk influences. Despite be a good song it never was a song that really seduced me. "Action This Day" is from "Hot Space". This is a song influenced by the new wave style, so in vogue at the time. It's a song driven by a pounding electronic drum machine. The only interesting thing on it is the vocal duet and the chorus sung by Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor. "Put Out The Fire" is also from "Hot Space". This is a traditional Queen's song. It has lead vocals by Freddie Mercury with Brian May singing lead vocals in falsetto at the end of the verse. It has a nice guitar solo by Brian May. It isn't a bad song, but it's a bit repetitive and I don't like of the Bee Gees' vocal parts. "Staying Power" is another song from "Hot Space". It's the only Queen's song, in all history of the band, to have a horn section. It's a song driven by a funky styled synthesizer bass riff that sounds as an electro-disco song. This is a very weak song. It's an awful way to open the album "Hot Space". "Jealousy" is from "Jazz". We are in presence of a great classic and typical ballad from the band that features Brian May playing acoustic guitar. All vocals were performed by Freddie Mercury that shows an incredible vocal work. That explains why he was considered one of the greatest singers ever. "Battle Theme" is from "Flash Gordon". I really don't know why this was put here. "Battle Theme" is only one of the small instrumental parts put in the middle of the soundtrack sound of the film. The only part that deserves a special mention is the first and the last parts, "Flash's Theme" and "Hero". So, this is not bad, but this is not great, either.

Conclusion: "Deep Cuts, Volume 2 (1977-1982)" is another good compilation of Queen, the second of the three parts of their compilations named "Deep Cuts". "Deep Cuts" covers the entire career of the band when Freddie Mercury was a member of the band. This one covers the career of the band between 1977 and 1982, the years where Queen released five studio albums, "News Of The World", "Jazz", "The Game", "Flash Gordon" and "Hot Space". We have four songs from "News Of The World", three songs from "Jazz", three songs from "The Game", one song from "Flash Gordon" and three songs from "Hot Space". It's true that the songs from "Hot Space" are really very weak, but the remaining songs are in general very good despite they aren't really very progressive. So, in general, this is a good compilation album.

Prog is my Ferrari. Jem Godfrey (Frost*)

Queen II, what a wonderful album. The band was halfway between Zeppelin and Yes, with a sprinkling of Moody Blues and Rocky Horror.

Disclosure: I cannot be accurately described as a fan of the band. I'm very respectful of Freddie Mercury's vocal and compositional abilities, and always wowed by Brian May's guitar style and talent. But I'm also a guy that takes music a little too seriously, and too many of the band's works strayed too far towards twee pop songs or torch songs. I'm rarely appreciative of either musical theater or the ridiculous synthetic superficiality that characterized so many bands' change of style in the 80s. Plus, Queen became so ubiquitous at least four times during my lifetime (Greatest Hits, Wayne's World, Live Aid and Freddie bio movie) that it was hard not to get sick of hearing about them. Queen is very much like a decadent dessert; once you overindulge, it's a long time before you can bring yourself to find it appetizing again.

Yet despite (or in some ways because of) this, I still regard Queen II as one of my favorite albums. Maybe not top 5 or 10, but not too far down from there. Go figure.

Immediately upon crossing the threshold, you're gifted with Brian May harmonies, symphonic and ahead of his time. Not so much in the Yardbirds alumni/ Hendrix vein of rock guitarists, May instead took a similar road as glam soloist Mick Ronson, a raw but symphonic preface to the neoclassical wave that took off after Van Halen and Uli Roth.

This layered smooth-but-edgy approach also characterized Roy Thomas Baker's arrangement of the vocals, so much a part of the Cars' first few albums. While this could become an overbearing wall of sound in lesser hands, the precise application of restraint and emphasis lends dramatic (it's OK to say 'melodramatic') weight when called for.

Nearly everything the album has to offer is touched upon briefly on the opening track: larger- than-life anthemic multitracked guitars and vocals, barebones breakdowns with solo voice and a single instrument, capricious changes in dynamics and pacing, all leading to a huge finale. I personally like "Father to Son" more than anything else on the album, but that's not to say there aren't many impressive moments to come.

Like any self-respecting prog band of the 70s, Queen feels it necessary to explore the idiosyncrasies of each band member on side one before launching into the epic collaboration of the side two. "White Queen" provides a dark arpeggio that connects the dots between "She's so Heavy" a few years before and "Still Loving You" several years later, and gets impressively heavy and dramatic with all the territory it covers under 5 minutes. Then there's a semi-acoustic semi- mellow semi-hippie jam sung by May himself -- and while no match for Freddie, it sounds competent and suitable, miles ahead of the following: the album's only contender for a stinker, "Loser in the End" a Roger Taylor contribution, comparatively underwhelming both in concept and realization.

But forget all that, because Side Black is one long rollercoaster of Queeny goodness. "Ogre Battle" is absolutely made for 70s fantastists and rockers alike, you can almost smell the 1st edition of D&D and the last edition of Ray Harryhausen stop motion animation. There was nobody like Queen to bridge the gap between some of the heaviest sounds of the 70s and musical theater.

I don't know that there's much point in deconstructing the narrative. I'm not sure there's even a narrative to deconstruct. The "Black" side can be seen as a collage, a melange, a rhapsody (oh wait, not yet) more in the vein of Abbey Road's second side than Close to the Edge or Echoes. We're not given any reason to really connect "Ogre Battle" to the sweet mournfulness of "Nevermore" or the celebratory culmination of "Funny How Love Is." Nevertheless, there is a certain continuity and flow that begs the listener to hear the whole side from start to finish -- probably something of a challenge to many at the time, and almost unimaginable in our lamentable attention-deficit modern era.

"The Fairy-Feller's Master Stroke" is a rollicking ride in and of itself. I don't know if the idea of describing a painting came from Crimson's "The Night Watch," but musically and lyrically the two couldn't be more different. Whereas Crimson's haunting historicity attempts to transcend the intervening centuries to connect the listener to the artist and his subjects, Queen simply runs down the list of depicted characters with various mischievous interpretations and musical motifs. Not that it's any less engaging, but as with everything Queen, there's a veneer of campy superficiality that belies (intentionally or otherwise) the undeniable musicality involved.

"March of the Black Queen" is mischievous in a different way. The guitars are furious at times, the lyrics darkly suggestive if not blatantly transgressive. It's fun with a side order of discomfort, part "Rocky Horror" and part painful metaphor of interpersonal sexual dynamics. Am I reading too much into it, or not enough?

"Seven Seas of Rhye" gets more than a fresh coat of paint to elevate it from the abbreviated and (mostly) instrumental version that closed the band's first album. It's now a fully-fledged song, albeit a largely incomprehensible one. As a finale, it is as satisfying and rocking as "Father to Son" was as an opener.

All-in-all, the entire album is a heavy, fun, and progressive treat from start to finish, in my opinion the single most enjoyable and accomplished album in the band's discography. I have a certain fondness for the debut, and there are many great individual songs yet to come -- obviously, they were to hit much higher popular acclaim (and sales) afterwards, but they never produced a long-player as seamlessly engaging as this. Shame about "Loser," though.