QUEEN II

Queen

Prog Related

4.35 | 951 ratings

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Menswear
Prog Reviewer

One of my biggest musical surprise ever.

If you thought Queen was a sell-out arena rock band you only heard one side of the story, because in it's early days (or daze?), Queen delivered with it's second album one critical slap in the face of progressive rock. Queen had so much talent, they created waves of influences that bands around the world pumped throughout the years. Some songs are just plain rock and roll, but the big part of the album is a hard piece of progressive pie.

Queen II is simply bombastic at worst and genius at best. The Black Side of the record is a delight from Mercury's obvious talent to amaze you with complicated song patterns and almost no choruses. Some songs are quite hard to digest because they keep changing pace, propulsing you from one side and punching you to another one. They feel more progressive than some done by Yes or King Crimson! To me, the cherry on the top has to be the total abscence of keyboards in the record. No synthetisers, no hammond, not even a pinch of vcs3. Only a traditional grand piano and a harpsicord are admitted. Hurray!

To me, discovering this totally new side of Queen by experiencing it's theatrical approach, it's insanely loud guitar and innovative (if not genius) vocals is a buzz I haven't felt in a very long time. This is an absolutely huge progressive experience and I'm sorry I haven't heard this before, I could've save money and invest more in stuff like this.

Amateurs of Rush's Fly by Night period must listen to this and after judge if it deserves more attention...but I'm confident they'll more than pleasently surprised, they'll be blown away to Buckingham Palace.

Come with us and do the march of the Black Queen.

Menswear | 5/5 | 2005-8-31

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