PROMISED LAND

After the grueling touring schedule of the previous years with the huge success of "Operation: Mindcrime" and "Empire," QUEENSRYCHE took a few years to take a much needed break and reflect on the experience of becoming a huge band on the world scene and all the pressures that go with it. The exhausting experience saw the band feeling no hurry to release any new material and so hard was it to get the whole band together that much of the album was recorded as individual tracks that were sewn together at the end to create a sum of the parts. The result is one of the most experimental albums of the band's career covering the diverse aspects of the band's past as well as incorporating a whole score of new sounds and ideas into the mix. The album may seem a little disjointed compared to the finely tuned focus of "Mindcrime" or the more commercial sound of "Empire" but despite not giving this a spin often, when I do I seem to like this album more each time and it has emerged as one of my favorites.

The album opens with a strange musique concrete intro followed by the only two real metal tracks on the album that could easily fit on one of the earlier albums. The first one of which "I Am I" has the addition of a sitar which signifies not only is QUEENSRYCHE back with gusto but that things are different this time around. After two hearty metal rockers the tides change completely and we get two acoustic rock tracks. "Out Of Mind" is a melodic spacey track about seeing the world from the confines of a nursing home as seen by the throwaway elders in US culture and "Bridge" is an apparent therapy session of Geoff Tate (I presume) about his relationship with his dad (or lack thereof). After this set we are treated to two of my favorite tracks on the album "PROMISED LAND" which is a long sprawling feast of sounds with saxophones and an excellent production and "Disconnected" which is a hint of a anesthetized paranoid schizophrenic unable to plug into the real world. The following track is a scrumptiously beautiful piano ballad called "Lady Jane" which like most of the track has nothing to do with the others. "One More Time" is another well written track that didn't appeal to me at first but since has become quite appreciated. The only track I still can't get into is the final one "Someone Else" which is yet another piano ballad. The melodic developments just don't hit me although it may work well for others.

Easily the strangest and all-over-the-map album by QUEENSRYCHE with a roller coaster's ride of ideas and musical implementations. I initially didn't warm up to this album because it was so different and not what I expected but after many years of coming back to it I find it has taken root and unleashed itself in a new way into my psyche. Unfortunately this would be the last great album by this band as we see the great fall into the musical dross beginning with next release as many an 80s band totally lost their way and soul. This would have been a great album to go out on but instead we got two decades of less than stellar releases and bitter battles between band members. 4.5 rounded down