From My Collection #89: Queensrÿche – Empire

Welcome to another edition of From My Collection. Last week, esteemed record producer Peter Collins passed away at the age of 73. Although his production work spanned a wide variety of genres, it was within the realms of hard and heavy music that Collins was perhaps most known, working with the likes of Alice Cooper, Suicidal Tendencies, Rush, Gary Moore, and the subject of today’s retrospective essay, Queensrÿche, on their most commercially successful album, Empire. This was Collins and Queensrÿche’s second collaboration, having previously worked together on their 1988 magnum opus, Operation: Mindcrime. Yet on Empire, Collins helped the band express a new side of themselves, one that would catapult them to multi-platinum arena headliner status. Join us as we go back in time to the building of Queensrÿche’s Empire.

Against all odds, Queensrÿche’s third studio album, Operation: Mindcrime, shot the band to superstardom nearly overnight. Those in the know were well aware of the band dating back to their early ’80s US power metal heyday. However, for most mainstream metallists, their first exposure to Queensrÿche came in 1988 when the theatrical music videos accompanying Mindcrime exploded on MTV. This, coupled with a high profile opening slot on Metallica’s Damaged Justice Tour, set the stage for Queensrÿche to soldier onwards into the ’90s with their heads held high. They, alongside Metallica and Guns N’ Roses, were poised to become the next generation of heavy metal headliners.

Following an album as ambitious as Mindcrime was no easy task. The pressure of replicating the commercial success aside, Mindcrime was an album that, if the naysayers had it their way, would be plagued from the start. The prospect of a metal band releasing a rock opera in the year 1988 couldn’t have been less fashionable, especially considering most of the youth associated the antiquated notion with the likes of Pink Floyd, The Who, and other ’70s titans their old burnout cousins enjoyed. And yet Queensrÿche proved everybody wrong, releasing an album that even today is hailed one of the finest in metal history.

So how does a band go about following an album like Mindcrime? With an album completely different, of course! With Collins back at the helm, Queensrÿche retreated back to the studio in early 1990 to record their latest collection of songs, which bore little to no resemblance to anything they had done before. Admittedly, Queensrÿche prided themselves on being a heavy metal chameleon of sorts. Mindcrime sounded nothing like Rage for Order, which sounded nothing like The Warning, but at the end of the day, it all sounded like Queensrÿche. It made sense that their next outing, Empire, would continue this trend.

At the time, “pop metal” was still very much all the rage. Bands like Mötley Crüe, Whitesnake, Def Leppard, and Alice Cooper weren’t just favorites among the long haired crowd, but also continuously scoring pop radio hits and dominating the charts. Despite being metal’s underdogs, one can’t help but think Queensrÿche noticed and felt a need to tag along. They had to have. There’s no way they didn’t notice, which largely explains the *gasp* pop angle they adopted on Empire. Yes, you read that correctly. However, in true Queensrÿche fashion, they’d go onto craft one of the finest, and easily most sophisticated, pop metal albums of all time.

As we drop the needle on side A of album one, this shift becomes more than apparent. “Best I Can” is NOT of the same braindead ilk of Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” or Winger’s “Seventeen”. No, this is bold and brash pop metal, balancing colossal arena metal riffs and melodic solos with brash synth noises and the optimistic lyricism of Chris DeGarmo. Think about it: A wheelchair bound man overcoming adversity to “write for a magazine”? This is the first of many unorthodox lyrical tropes explored on Empire, but we’ll get more into that later.

The horn-heavy “The Thin Line” doubles down on the pop side of the pop metal spectrum with its massive layered chorus and crisp production. The band manages to maintain their edge with Tate’s ever-dramatic vocal delivery and overtly lustful lyrics (“Skin-tight leather provides my pleasure”), another first for the Queensrÿche camp. Seriously, the fact that they went from songs about computers overtaking mankind to women and romance in the span of 4 short years is nothing short of mind-blowing, and there’s a lot of the latter to be found on Empire.

The aforementioned theme of women, romance, and longing continues on “Jet City Woman”. It’s no surprise this arena rock anthem went onto become one of the band’s biggest hits. It is accessible as accessible can be, modeled in the tradition of titans like Journey and Boston, without a trace of technicality or progginess to be found. The chorus is an easy sing along, centered around the song’s title repeated over, and over, and over. Having seen Queensrÿche on numerous occasions, I’m at a point where personally, I could go a show without hearing “Jet City Woman” live, but I know what riots would ensue if they didn’t perform it.

On the CD, “Jet City Women” segues into “Della Brown”, who we can only assume is the “Jet City Woman”. I’m sure there’s probably an interview with Geoff Tate out there confirming this theory, but I digress. Whether it is or isn’t true, it’s damn clever. “Jet City Woman” tells the man’s side of the story, how he longs for his “Jet City Woman”, while “Della Brown” paints a melancholic portrait of an empty woman who drifts from day to day with little purpose in life. She once showed signs of hope, but has since been relegated to a “street corner girl”, which makes us assume she’s a prostitute.

Romance is explored yet again on what was another smash hit for the band, “Another Rainy Night (Without You)”. If you thought “The Thin Line” and “Jet City Woman” were poppy, “Rainy Night” is so sugary that it could send damn near anyone into a diabetic coma. Seriously, strip away the metallic leads and biting riffs, and this could’ve been a Whitney Houston song. I don’t say this as a knock, by the way. If anything, it’s a testament to Queensrÿche’s writing abilities. For as well as they could craft power metal blitzes like “Queen of the Reich” or epic metal suites like “Roads to Madness”, they could craft a timeless pop metal tune that continues to be played on the radio to this day.

Ironically, Empire‘s title track is also its heaviest, and one of the only songs bearing semblance to its predecessor with its harsh riffs and socially conscious lyricism. Drawing a picture of inner city gang violence, drug trafficking, and the corrupt politicians who orchestrate it all, “Empire” is as timeless as “Jet City Woman” or “Rainy Night”, but for other reasons. Despite being nearly 35 years old, its message resonates as much today as it did then, and set to a brooding prog metal soundtrack at that.

As we drop the needle on side A of album two, the heaviness continues with the equally socially aware “Resistance”. I wonder if the seeds for this song and “Empire” were sown during the Mindcrime sessions? Not only is the lyrical content similar, but musically speaking, they’re very much in line with the more accessible moments of Mindcrime. Whereas the lion’s share of cuts on Empire can be described as hard rock or pop, “Resistance” is undisputedly metal through and through.

The mood shifts dramatically on what would become Queensrÿche’s biggest hit, “Silent Lucidity”. This is not just the softest song on Empire, but the softest song Queensrÿche had recorded to date: A full blown symphonic rock ballad that bore an almost lullaby-like arrangement. For any other metal band, such a song would’ve been the death knell, especially being released as a single. For Queensrÿche, it was a Top 10 hit and even earned them a Grammy nomination. Like it or not, “Silent Lucidity” exposed the band to a whole new demographic who otherwise might have never heard of them.

“Hand on Heart” continues the bombastic sophisti-metal sound of “The Thin Line” and “Best I Can”, placing its gigantic hooks and chorus above all. Said hook is so catchy that I always wondered why this wasn’t released as a single, and this is for an album that boasted four hit singles and a couple other rock radio favorites. Hold on, did I just use the term “sophisti-metal”? Indeed, I did, and we will explore exactly why shortly. Until then, we have two more songs to tackle.

“One and Only” sees the band revisit the ongoing theme of romance one last time and going full pop metal, before closing with the album’s “proggiest” moment, “Anybody Listening?”. I must use the term “prog” loosely here. “Anybody Listening?” doesn’t boast the unpredictable arrangement or overt technicality associated with the genre, but it does “feel” prog so to speak, definitely in its delivery and atmosphere. Like many other cuts on Empire, it toes the line between light and darkness, heavy and soft, and does so brilliantly, leaving the listener in a state of disassociation upon its conclusion.

As you and I both know, Empire paid off in spades for Queensrÿche. It went onto sell over 3 million copies in the United States alone, and inspired Queensrÿche’s peers to further explore a more ambitious musical path. I could end this essay here, but now you’re all probably wondering: Joe, what the hell is sophisti-metal? Let me put it this way: If American Psycho‘s protagonist Patrick Bateman were to be caught listening to a metal album, Empire would be it. Historian Martin Popoff infamously described Queensrÿche as “Iron Maiden for the high rent district”. Only here, there’s no Iron Maiden: Just high rent district.

And yet Empire doesn’t feel corporate or banal or devoid of soul. At times, it’s a scathing critique of this very culture, while simultaneously sounding in line sonically with its associated music (“Ya like Huey Lewis and the News?”). Perhaps this was all planned intentionally from the beginning…or I’m analyzing far too deeply and should just enjoy the album. Whatever the case may be, there’s no denying that Queensrÿche’s Empire cemented the band’s musical empire, placing them in the same league as their heroes in Priest and Maiden as a band to be admired and emulated by aspiring metal bands for decades to follow.