Walk in the Shadows

REVIEW: Queensryche – Rage For Order (remastered)

QUEENSRYCHE – Rage For Order (originally 1986, 2003 EMI remastered edition)

Every fan has their favourite Queensryche album.  Whether it be The Warning, Mindcrime, Promised Land or Empire, there are plenty of great albums in their back catalogue.  I used to seek the warm high of Promised Land when looking to chill with my favourite Queensryche.  Now I look for refuge in the cold, technological sheen of their 1986 album Rage For Order.

Rage For Order was a challenging album in its time and today it is still complex.  In 1986, fans questioned the gothy makeup and hair, not to mention the excessive samples and synths.  Today you can look back and almost call Rage For Order the first progressive industrial metal album.  It certainly has qualities from all three of those genres.  Geoff Tate beat Trent Reznor to the punch by years.  Rage seems to have a vague futuristic concept about a world of technology, revolution, and disconnection.

Although Rage For Order is certainly not an immediate listen, certain key tracks are commercial enough to keep you coming back.  The first is “Walk in the Shadows”, one of the few songs to be played live fairly consistently over the years.  “Walk in the Shadows” could pass as a hard rocking hit.  For the first time Queensryche really proved they were more than a simple metal band.  The slick production was completely different from their first two records, with the edge taken off the guitars and instead given to the computers and sequencers.  They give the whole album a precise, punchy tech sound that is its own form of heavy.  No wonder:  Dave “Rave” Ogilvie was an engineer.

A dense ballad called “I Dream in Infrared” has sorrow, but flowing through the veins of a computer.  Geoff Tate blows minds with his incredible voice and singing ability, layered for maximum effect.  In 1991 it was remixed acoustically for a single B-side, and that version is a bonus track on the remastered edition.  The original was perfect for what it was, but the acoustic mix is more accessible to outsiders.  It ends suddenly and the metallic guitars of “The Whisper” enter, accompanied by clock-like percussion.  Rage For Order has many songs with layered, overlapping vocals and you can hear that on the chorus.  It is a cold, sterile but powerful track.

The strangest song was actually the lead single, “Gonna Get Close to You”.  It was the only cover Queensryche ever put on one of their studio albums, a track by Canadian songstress Lisa DalBello.  In the hands of Geoff Tate, it becomes a creepy song of a stalker with a strangely rousing pre-chorus.  “You think I’m a fool or maybe some kind of lunatic?  You say I’m wasting my time but I know what to do with it.  It’s as plain as black and white.  I’m gonna get close to you.”  Cree-hee-eepy!  Which is the point.  The bizarre samples and synths only deepen the macabre.  DalBello’s original is perhaps even creepier, but Tate’s pompous bravado adds its own slant.  “If you knew my infinite charm, there’d be no reason to be so alarmed…”

As an added bonus, a 12″ extended version of “Gonna Get Close to You” is included in the bonus tracks, but like most extended versions from the 1980s, it’s very choppy and awkward.

Along with the technology, there is a theme of loneliness on Rage For Order, and “Gonna Get Close to You” plays into that.  “The Killing Words” contains more heartbreak on the album’s second ballad (third if you count “Gonna Get Close to You”).  Tate’s voice is drenched in pain.  A 1994 acoustic version from the “Bridge” CD single is included as a bonus track.

“Surgical Strike” is a brilliant track, fast and heavy, and working with the technology.  The lyrics are brilliant and quite prescient.

It’s lonely in the field,
that we send our fighters to wander.
They leave with minds of steel,
It’s their training solution.
We’ve programmed the way,
It leads us to Order.
There’s no turning back.

A Surgical Strike.
We’ve taught them not to feel.
performance is their task,
A Surgical Strike,
Its time is arriving now for you.

The plan for the day,
will be swift as the lightning they harness.
The atom display,
It’s not mindless illusion,
At master control, assessment will not,
Be by humans.
There’s no turning back…

It feels like this future is not very far off.

One of the most techy tracks is “Neue Regel”.  Clockwork percussion, strangely computerized lead vocals, and intelligently used samples paint a scene of a future battlefield, complete with bomb-like drum sounds.  The multi-layered chorus is one of Queensryche’s most perfect.  Respect to Geoff Tate.  When the man was at his peak, nobody could touch him, both vocally and as a songwriter.  Of course one must also remember the other side of the equation, which was guitarist Chris DeGarmo.  He has more songwriting credits on this album than Geoff Tate, including two solo credits (“The Whisper” and “I Will Remember”).

The future continues to look cold and dark on “Chemical Youth (We Are Rebellion)”.  “Our religion is technology” is one line, and if only Tate knew how right he was!  There is a still a spark of hope and that is the young.  “Chemical Youth” is one of the heaviest tracks on the album, and sonically very interesting too.  The next ballad “London” fades in with a synthy bass line.  Loneliness returns.  “There’s some things in life I could never face.  The worst is being alone.”

The technology slant hits its peak on the brilliant “Screaming in Digital”.  Describing this song can do it no justice.  It is like listening to Queensryche within the gleaming sterile walls of the dystopian sci-fi classic THX-1138.  There is far too much going on underneath it all to absorb in just a few listens.  You will hear new sounds you never noticed before even 30 years later.  Artificial intelligence has never rocked so heavy.

I am the beat of your pulse,
The computer word made flesh,
We are one you and I,
We are versions of the same,
When you can see what I feel,
Don’t turn your back on me,
Or you might find that your dreams,
Are only program cards.

Fucking chilling!

“Screaming in Digital” must be counted on any list of Queensryche’s best music.  It is sheer genius, far beyond what their hard rock peers were peddling.  It was also years ahead of its time.  By crossing digital techniques with heavy metal in such an intelligent way, Queensryche truly were breaking new ground.

“I Will Remember” is the final song, a ballad that seems to tie it all together.  It has the feel of a lonely ballad, while lyrically tying up the technology concept.  “And we wonder how machines can steal each other’s dreams.”  Another Queensryche classic, including a genius DeGarmo acoustic guitar solo.  Shades of the future “Silent Lucidity” too (also written by DeGarmo).

There are four bonus tracks including the three discussed above.  The last one is a 1991 live version of “Walk in the Shadows”, which appears to be a mix of two different performances judging by the credits.  Whatever the case may be, it’s cool to get a live version of this incredible song as a coda to the album.

Queensryche took the conceptual approach to its logical apex next time out with Operation: Mindcrime.  They ditched the technology and went back to guitars and even added an orchestra.  For that reason, Rage For Order is very unique in the collection.  It was a sound they have never repeated.  Operation: Mindcrime had a sequel, but Rage For Order never will.

5/5 stars

 

 

 

#420: Walk With Meat

RECORD STORE TALES MkII: Getting More Tale
#420: Walk With Meat

Everybody loves misheard lyrics!  “’Scuse me while I kiss this guy.”  There are entire books available with nothing but commonly misheard lyrics.  My dad used to think Gene Simmons was singing “a beach creature in the Ladies Room” on that Kiss classic from Rock N’ Roll Over.  Misheard lyrics can be embarrassing when caught singing along, but also fun.

Perhaps some lyrics are not misheard at all.  Perhaps some are intentional?

My good friend Uncle Meat pointed out a good one on Queenryche’s 1986 track “Walk in the Shadows”.  This opening song from the amazing Rage For Order album has remained a fan-favourite over the years.  Its progressive-rock-meets-technology vibe was very new for the time, though it was skeptically met by fans of pure guitar rock.  As much as Rage For Order broke new musical ground, it was also quite complex lyrically.  I even studied some of the songs (“Neue Regel”, “Chemical Youth”, and “Surgical Strike”) for a highschool English project.  But what was Geoff Tate saying in the lyrics?

What? You say you’re through with me,
I’m not through with you,
We’ve had what others might call love.

Only mildly disturbing.  Sounds like a clingy ex-lover who can’t face that his relationship is over.

You say it’s over now,
What’s done, what’s through?
You can’t stay away, you need me,
I need you.

Again, still clingy and slightly desperate.  Nothing of any depth or hidden meaning though.  It’s all right there on the page.  But wait….

Ow! You got to stay with me…(Walk with me)
Oooh! Walk in the shadows (Walk with MEAT),
Walk in the shadows (Walk with me),
Ahhh, yeah! Walk in the shadows, WOO! (Walk with MEAT),
Walk in the shadows (Walk with me),
Ah, ahh, ahhhhh! Walk in the shadows (Walk with MEAT),
Walk with me!

Listen to the end of the song.  You can clearly hear the “t” in “Meat” on every other line in the outro.  Clearly!  And notice how Geoff puts his emphasis and screams and fill-ins on the MEAT lines. He even threw in a “woo” there. How often do you hear Geoff Tate throwing “woos” into his lines? So what was Geoff Tate really trying to tell us on “Walk in the Shadows”?*

Analyzing the lyrics of the song, and digging into the album itself for more clues, I think I have finally figured out the true, hidden story behind “Walk in the Shadows” by Queensryche.  The technological theme takes us into the future.  That much is obvious from the album’s lyrics and concepts.  “I only dream infrared,” and all the high-tech artificial intelligence hints at a future that had not existed in 1986.  We are getting closer, but thankfully the robots haven’t revolted yet. Tate is obviously foretelling the future rather than singing about current events in 1986.

Some time in late ’85, when Geoff Tate was knee-deep in a vat of red wine, a bottle fell off his top shelf, hit him on the head and knocked him out cold.  He awoke in a future that is still far away, even for us in 2015.  The year is unknown – Geoff was still too loaded on wine to pick up a newspaper and read the date.  However one thing is known – the future will be dominated by Uncle Meat. Tate wandered this future landscape for some time, and witnessed things that no-one would believe. His only option was to hide these warnings in the lyrics of a concept album.  That album was Rage For Order.  “Walk in the Shadows” was the opening song.  That’s how Geoff Tate plays his cards — right there on the table.

“Walk in the shadows, walk with MEAT.”  Geoff had seen a glimpse of our planet’s glorious future.  Walk with him and you will see – the future is walking with MEAT.  You couldn’t get any clearer.  Once you hear that not-so-subtle “T” in “Meat”, the rest slowly reveals itself, like a puzzle with the edges already finished.

I for one welcome our new Meat overlord!

WALK WITH MEAT

 

* There is no evidence to suggest a connection to the Joey Tempest Conspiracy (TM).

*^ This  footnote is in no way an attempt to keep reminding you of the Joey Tempest Conspiracy (TM), in an effort to foreshadow future posts.

*^^ It actually is.