Metal Monday: Eyes Of A Stranger

by Queensryche

~ Hard rock tells a story ~

Queensryche always had a… ‘different’ sound than the rest of the heavy-bass bluesy crunch you’d get from the rest of the Sabbath/Purple disciples of the hard rock world. Much more staccato, with more controlled distortion and cleaner lead lines. It’s almost like they wanted you to actually hear everyone in the band instead of just a muddy groove. It’s almost ironic that they’re from the same town as folks like Mudhoney and Alice in Chains and Soundgarden.

But more importantly, Queensryche got miles away from the girls, guitars, and fast cars topics that the rest of the hard rock world lived in. They made some minor dents with tunes like “Queen of the Reich” while I was living in Germany (where they seemed tmore popular on the continent than back home) but it was the Operation: Mindcrime concept album that really put them over the top with hard rock audiences in the US. Everyone was desperate to show off how smart they were with being able to explain the plot of the album to their friends (until we all read the book that came with the special box set 5 years later and realized that we missed half of it) but truthfully they just got better at writing songs, and it showed on this album, with at least half of the best tunes of their career.

This was the closing tune, but also the lead single, and one of the strongest songs. It was a staple of Headbanger’s Ball for about 8 months, and of my mixtapes in the car for probably 18 months. It’s a masterpiece performance not just by Tate, but also Degarmo & Wilton.

Originally published at http://www.sixdegreesofradio.com on April 26, 2021.

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