Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Warning: Operation Intelligence, March 16, 2000
1986 was a phenomenal year for metal. If you could ignore Judas Priest's "Turbo," you might recall that Ozzy topped the charts with "The Ultimate Sin." Iron Maiden released "Somewhere in Time," their most musically complex collection. Megadeth gained respect with "Peace Sells" while Metallica peaked with "Master of Puppets." Anthrax unleashed its classic "Among the Living," Slayer pushed (rather tore) the envelope with "Reign in Blood," and Queensryche, that five-piece band out of the future spawning grounds of grunge, soared past its Priest/Maiden roots with the raw, hard but colorfully progressive "Rage For Order."1984's "Warning" set the stage for "Rage For Order," but while the former seemed just a bit restricted by thin production if not overshadowed by the emergence of posers like Motley Crue (which held it in check while Q's peers like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden were gaining in popularity to rather mixed results), "Rage" broke the rules long before progressive metal bands like Dream Theater came to be. "Rage" explores man's deepest thoughts ("I Will Remember"), his existence in a faceless world of technology ("Screaming in Digital") and his place within a frighteningly fascist regime ("Neue Regel") - each concept a part of the total Queensyche mythology at that time. Sure, the occasional dip into the love tunnel surfaces now and then ("Killing Words") but the band's psychosis takes what should have been a banal pop pastiche called "Gonna Get Close to You" and turns it into yet another signature of the Queensryche experience - dark, sinister, forboding - but not evil - which always separated Queensryche from its peers. While early Iron Maiden wreaked hell's fire and Judas Priest unleashed beasts and monsters, most of Queensryche's music managed to echo at least a slight degree of positivity in the midst of what could be construed as utter personal and societal chaos in the form of songs deep, harmonic, progressive and powerful. The voice of Geoff Tate, then the latest in a long line of vocalists that traces its inspiration to the very earliest wails of Ian Gillan (ie. Tate-Dickinson-Dio-Halford-Byron-Gillan), bests his impressive list of peers with incredible range and dynamics. His delivery in such epics as "Dreaming in Infrared" and "London" encompass metal, opera and even Broadway (without the cliches that often denigrate each). Neil Kernon's production opens the sound with the clarity of Phil Ramone ("Warning") and the power of Peter Collins ("Mindcrime") yet without the flatness of the former or the distortion of the latter. The visual package may offend some, considering the rather vampiric look with capes, leather and hair spray surrounded by psuedo Moorish/Victorian/Renaissance trappings - but the image in a way contributes to the album's theme. It works for "Rage." It would never have worked for "Empire"! Two years later the band would release "Operation: Mindcrime," a concept album once thought to rival Pink Floyd's "The Wall" or The Who's "Quadrophenia" and thought of by most fans as their best. As great as "Mindcrime" is, however, no fan can deny the unique production, songwriting style, textures and moods that comprise "Rage For Order." "Mindcrime" may very well be better than the sum of its parts, but the sum of parts that form the nucleus of "Rage For Order" transcends the usual limitations of a heavy metal record. Intelligence and metal began to co-exit peacefully within a sentence without the usual snicker. Buy it.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very distinctive and complex work, September 27, 2001
No doubt you will be stifling a snicker at the goofy perms and goth-meets-new-wave look on the back of the album, but we don't need to digress into that cliched discussion of books and their covers, do we? Set in a dark future world of dystopian nightmare, mechanized dehumanization, vampires and shadow-dwelling psychos, this is easily the most complexly-engineered and thickest-sounding and intriguing Queensryche album of them all, and certainly one of the finest prog-metal albums of the 80s. Producer Neil Kernon, more of a new wave producer, really runs with the gauntlet here, helping the band bring across its "New World Order" theme (which would really come to full fruition on _Operation: Mindcrime_) by richly layering Geoff's magnificent pipes (here in all his screeching euro-metal glory) over tapestries of subtle keyboard work, programmed keyboard atmospheres and synthetic-Mutt-Lange-sounding drums. My GOD if ever there was a metal album that needed a DGC gold-disc release, this is the one. Its so meaty I almost couldn't listen to _Mindcrime_ because of the radical difference in sound. If it weren't for the rich vocal harmonies, this album, at many points, could easily be mistaken for industrial in some circles. "Gonna Get Close To You" was my first intro to Queensryche (back when Mtv used to be a little more daring), sort of a heavy-metal version of "Every Breath You Take" and clearly its creepy, claustrophic tone created a singularly-affecting piece that has no imitators. Don't Ignore "Dreaming In Infared" and "The Killing Words", two magnificent bona-fide Queensryche classics more in the spirit of _Warning_ with racing lockstep dual-guitar leads from Wilton and DeGarmo. My favorite tune has to be "Screaming in Digital", with its complex polyrhythms,angular guitar work, stunning vocal arrangements and mechanized synth-sounding bass beats, has to be one of the creative peaks for metal in the 80s. Ends with the lovely and meditative "I Will Remember", hinting at the band's future glories with "Silent Lucidity." The synth sounds may be a bit dated, but the audacity of this album sends its message loud and clear from across the ages.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
One of the 'Ryche's best., October 12, 2000
Before Rage For Order, there was little that markedly separated Queensryche from its peers (Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and the like). Their self-titled LP and The Warning were pretty straightforward metal releases. Good metal, of course, but metal one way or another. Sure, they were great musicians, great songwriters, and frontman Geoff Tate was one of the best male vocalists around, but stil,l in a lot of ways, they were just another metal band. But that changed with Rage For Order. Suddenly, the progressive touches of The Warning became more prominent, and the band's budding maturity was right on course. Queensryche was one of the pioneers of progmetal (though they were never progmetal themselves) and this shows it.In a way, the album is cyber-punk-metal stuff, with the evident themes in the lyrics, but in spite of the inherent cliche it never becomes lame. Some 80's cheese rears its head from time to time, but it's not overbearing enough that it becomes deleterious to the music. Rage For Order was obviously looked at from an album perspective as opposed to a "song" standpoint, and this gave the band room to experiment with different sounds, from the darkly beautiful "I Will Remember" to the heavy, hard-edged "Chemical Youth". Here, Geoff Tate's vocals have expanded beyond the Dickinson-esque wail to better utilize his tremendous range. He hadn't quite reached the same level of dynamics attained in "Operation Mindcrime" or "Empire" but it was enough to put him head and shoulders above his peers. The DeGarmo-Wilton guitar duo is genuinely impressive. Their brilliant, weaving interplay made them one of the best duos in heavy metal, and their solos were more than just stylistic requisites...they actually served as peaks of intensity for the songs. The tight production and the solid musicianship alleviate any sense of thinking the album is dated, and it remains one of Queensryche's best albums.
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