QUEENSRYCHE – AMERICAN SOLDIER
Seeing as though this highly American band have been around for 20 years or more, one will have huge expectations of what the major label have described as an “epic concept album” concerning the experience and aftermath of war from the soldier’s eyes and ears. Singer Geoff Tate extensively researched the psychology and first-hand stories of veterans from all of the major wars of the 20th and 21st Centuries, starting with his own father’s experiences in Vietnam and Korea. This material has led to an album dense with heavy melancholy and a military toughness that seems timely if not a little overwrought. Peppered throughout this collection of anthemic rock-outs are snippets of actual dialogue from Tate’s interviews with the soldiers, linking the album into its audience with a clear personal respect. Now, the nobility of this concept and the dedication with which Tate and producer Jason Slater set about constructing this metal opus is palpable; however what’s the music like? Well to a person who is admittedly not a fan of the back catalogue of this highly lauded Seattle powerhouse, the whole thing comes across a little too thickly coated. Tate’s vocals are thrust up so high in the mix you can literally feel his serpentine warbling resonating in the lower spine; and it gets a little taxing to listen to. The hit single from the album Man Down! reads like an Oliver Stone film treatment, and sounds like a video game with its howling guitars and skiddle-thump drumming, and Tate’s inexorable wailing. Everything in this record is about the detail, sure – it sounds very expensive, and the string passages that punctuate the action are suitably emotionally manipulative. So all in all it’s well executed, but in this age where the more discerning listeners among us will appreciate a bit of subtlety, Queensryche have pummelled us with an album that is just a little too exhausting in its gusto. This thing even rivals Chinese Democracy in its soap-box hair-metal posturing, and really it’s up to the listening individual what sort of taste that leaves in the mouth.
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