By Jae-Ha Kim
Rolling Stone
July 11, 1991
Mecca Arena
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
May 11, 1991
Intelligent heavy metal is an oxymoron in today’s rock world. Too many bands rely on videos featuring nubile models rather than honest musicianship to sell their songs. The member of Queensrÿche stand out in this world, not because they are the prettiest, loudest or raunchiest, but because they treat their music as art rather than product.
Whether the 8,000 kids thrashing their hair and banging their heads at the Mecca appreciated the two hour and fifteen minute show as art is debatable. But they clearly related to the band’s live sound, which was much more stripped down than any of Queensrÿche’s recordings. On its LPs, Queensrÿche tackles, with serious thoughtfulness, subjects ranging from obsessive love to government conspiracy. The band, whose material translates well live, gets the message across with a minimum of histrionics.
As the opening strains of “There’s No Business Like Show Business” played over the PA system, the five band members from Seattle jogged out onto a slanted, angular stage. They kicked the concert off with a raucous version of “Resistance,” from their current LP “Empire,” and followed with music culled from their eight-year career.
What saves Queensrÿche from musical pomposity is the succinct musicianship within the group. At the Mecca, guitarists Chris DeGarmo and Michael Wilton packed a one-two punch that punctuated singer Geoff Tate’s voice — an instrument that help up surprisingly well enough though he tortured it with intensity throughout the evening. And drummer Scott Rockenfield’s solo during “Eyes of a Stranger” was a testament to what could be accomplished with brevity.
While the double-platinum success of Empire and its crossover single, Silent Lucidity, has enabled Queensrÿche to headline in arenas for the first time, almost half of the band’s show was dedicated to its breakthrough 1988 LP, Operation: mindcrime. In an unusual move that could have backfired, Queensrÿche played all fifteen songs from the heavy-metal opera, whose lyrics are on par with Pink Floyd’s Wall or the Who’s Tommy.
Operation: mindcrime is a conceptual piece, and for it to be successful, the audience’s willingness to focus its attention on one subject, the world’s moral decay, for the course of an hour had to be relied on. The predominantly young male audience, weaned on MTV, complied, listening in hushed rapture as Tate sang, I used to think that only America’s way was right, but now the holy dollar rules everybody’s lives,” from “Revolution Calling.”
The music was augmented by conceptual videos that juxtaposed images of police brutality and student demonstrations with shots of consumer greed. The laser show, by arena standards, was subdued: A bright array of rainbow colors flashed out at the audience at regular intervals, inciting cheers from the fan each time it lit up the dark venue. But the most spectacular visual effect was near the end of the show, when a giant hologram of Tate smashed its way through the video screen.
Over the years, heavy metal has become the bastard son of rock, and many of its artists seem less concerned about writing strong lyrics than in creating big hairdos. Although the members of Queensryche are tour veterans, it is still too early to judge whether the group will redefine the limits of the heavy-metal genre. What is clear is that with the success Queensrÿche is enjoying, it is bound to encourage other younger groups to recognize that being smart doesn’t have to be a liability in the music business.
Suicidal Tendencies opened the show with a set that assaulted the audience’s collective senses with speed-metal-guitar chords and motor-mouth vocalist Mike Muir’s rap-style chanting. While the Tendencies’ loud, angry style on songs such as “You Can’t Bring Me Down” makes it easy to categorize them as a heavy-metal band, their musical sensibilities are more in tune with the spirit of punk rock. Had they been old enough to tour in the Seventies, they would have made a fine opening act for the Sex Pistols.
(The concert review ran on page 30.)
