Operation Mindcrime 2

Heres a review of it that I found 

It’s quite a feat that Geoff Tate has managed to stay true to his longstanding disdain for metal (for which he’s been pilloried) and still deliver a record that is a bunch of good things, including dark, complicated, true to the spirit and tone of the original Mindcrime, and above all evocative of heaviness without being all that point-blank heavy metallic. Hell, Queensryche also manage a moody murkiness despite a very bright recording, a recording that – either by accident or design – captures the energetic and brisk high midranges of the original ’88 album’s drum sound. The story is set 20 years after the first one, and is just as bizarre as the first one, involving again Nikki and Sister Mary and Dr. X, and like the first one, this one is destined to be admired but only from afar, Mindcrime being metal’s Ulysses (or worse, Finnegan’s Wake) – everybody’s got one but few have actually read it. As well, Queensryche manage to create a modern prog metal masterwork, but more from offering a bewildering stack of textures versus weird time signatures or even riffs. But have no fear, there are rockers (and more often, crunching passages) as well as guitar solos. One of the highlights is ‘The Chase’, which features Ronnie James Dio, the track also speaking to this idea of progressive, sophisticated arrangement plus the aforementioned heaviness without all that much bald-faced heavy metal. The strings or keyboards or keyboard strings or whatever the hell they are, seem to arrive and hang around in too many places mid to late in the album, and I eventually found myself saddled with concept fatigue, but fortunately, songs like ‘Fear City Slide’ arrive to impart upon the listener this seductive sleight of hand the band’s managed, Queensryche impressively crafting a sort of modern, electronic-sheened yet dark prog metal, a descriptor that also applies to the band’s misunderstood at the time but now well-regarded Rage For Order album from ’86. Ends on a miasmic and out-chilled Pink Floyd note with something called ‘All The Promises’, Queensryche almost daring the chattering classes to keep up the tittering about the band losing its metal compass. Simultaneously, the band can walk away, grinning like wrinkled Cheshire cats, o’er the triumph of assimilating the disparate elements of the sprawled catalogue to date along with the sprawled motivations of the five guys forced to pound this thing into place.

I think the music critics are sharpening their knives for this release, the same with the new Guns n Roses which is said to be released next month too.

I hope Geoff Tate has the last laugh

I would so love to see them return to the level they were at at the end of the 80's start of the 90's, but something tells me it will be little more than there last couple of releases, rubbish in other words.

I noticed that review barely mentioned the music, what I wanted to know was have they returned to the technicall level of yesteryear.