“From the reviews I’ve seen so far, I think we’re mostly on the same page. Fortunately, Operation Mindcrime won’t be getting anywhere near my top 10 list.
Written by: gdmonline
ARTIST: Operation Mindcrime
ALBUM: The Key
LABEL: Frontiers
SERIAL: FRCD 704
YEAR: 2015
SPONSOR: Frontiers Online Portal
CD REISSUE: Discogs Reissue List
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: USA
LINEUP: Geoff Tate, Mark Daly – vocals * Kelly Gray, Scott Moughton – guitar * John Moyer, Dave Ellefson – bass * Randy Gane – keyboards * Simon Wright, Scott Mercado, Brian Tichy – drums
TRACK LISTING: 01 Choices * 02 Burn * 03 Reinventing The Future * 04 Ready To Fly * 05 Discussions In A Smoke Filled Room * 06 Life Or Death? * 07 The Stranger * 08 Hearing Voice * 09 On Queue * 10 An Ambush Of Sadness * 11 Kicking In The Door * 12 The Fall
RATING: 40/100
WEBLINKS: Site Link
Background
Well, we’ve seen all the cat-fighting between the members of the original Queensryche over the last few years. The fallout has been unforgiving, unpleasant, and to be frank totally unnecessary too. A few ‘UN’s in there. Let’s get down to the nitty gritty. It didn’t really achieve a lot, except for a heap of bruised egos, broken relationships and a broken fan-base.
These guys totally wrote the book ‘How to fuck up your Fan-Base 101’. Such is the pity. In the aftermath, original lead singer Geoff Tate formed his version of ‘Queensryche’ albeit with a different name. Operation Mindcrime is the bandname, with a bunch of proven musicians trying to emulate the Queensryche sound of olde.
Was Tate’s move to break the legacy a good one or not? Frontiers Records in Italy obviously thought so, but using the Operation Mindcrime banner was just plain nonsensical. Talk about putting Fuel on to the fire. Anyway, let’s put their new album ‘The Key’ to the litmus test.
The Songs
Well, the litmus test is under pressure from the ‘get-go’, this 47 minute affair will feel the pulling power of public opinion long before the half hour I reckon. Produced by Tate, it’s hard to know how to approach ‘The Key’. I feel trepidation even before putting said key into the door lock, opening the way.
Musically, it’s kinda dark and murky, The Operation Mindcrime house is draped in closed curtains with no real light to speak of. If the 1988 concept album ‘OperationMindcrime’ was the inspiration behind this set, then the sentiment and influence is admirable, but it’s like Tate can’t quite escape from the bubble that the album built for him. Everyone else has since moved on.
‘The Key’ is all over the place musically. It stutters, staggers and trips from one moment to the next. It’s a very hard sell to melodic rockers, proggies and metallers. Of the tracks I did like, ‘Life Or Death?’ was quite modern, swirly and different, not unlike Lillian Axe in their early days.
‘The Fall’ sounded better because of its beefed up guitar, but it still struggled tempo wise.’Reinventing The Future’ was kinda cool, and is one of the better tracks onboard. That was about it for me, sorry to say.
In Summary
From the reviews I’ve seen so far, I think we’re mostly on the same page. Fortunately, Operation Mindcrime won’t be getting anywhere near my top 10 list. Probably not even my top 100 for 2015. Pass.
Video
Burn
Reinventing The Future
The Stranger
Entire Album (Select Tracks)
For the purposes of working within WordPress’grammatical syntax, we have named Operation: Mindcrime as just Operation Mindcrime, without the use of the colon.