HEAR IN THE NOW FRONTIER

Please, please God no, not my beloved Queensryche! Sadly, the reign of this pioneer came to an end with 1997's Hear in the Now Frontier. The band that helped to invent prog metal along with Watchtower and Fates Warning had had a string of successes starting from the straight-foward eponymous 1983 EP to 1994's Promised Land. The abnd's desire never to repeat themselves resulted in this stripped down disappointment. Now, I know progressive means no sticking to a formula, but Queensryche had been evolving with each release, getting proggier by the album. Then this album hits and it make the Ep look prog by comparison. Geoff's voice, as always, is magnificent, but the crashing and squealing guitars tha tsupported him on past classics are wafer thin. Indeed, they make the guitars on MEtallica's ...And Justice For All album sound strong. There are a few good tracks. "Sign of the Times," "SpOOl," and "Cuckoo's Nest" all are promising tracks, but the rest of the album is dull. Things only got bleaker from here when Chris DeGarmo left the band and the band's all-time low, Q2K hit in 99. Things would pick back up with the excellent Tribe and the solid Operation Mindcrime II but everyone excluding the hardest Ryche fans should steer clear of this.