...or, Yet MORE vintage Queensryche...just because it's my blog.
One of my selections on the iPod last night at work was 1984's The Warning. This was the band's first full-length album, released about a year after the self-titled EP, and I think it probably showed Queensryche at its most progressive; every song on this album is one more reason I am baffled at people lumping the band in with the other "hair metal" bands of the day such as Poison, Bon Jovi, Winger, etc. Geoff Tate and his bandmates really were coming up with some cutting-edge metal back then. Contrary to the go-to glam topics of getting drunk and laid and other such pretty-boy posturing, almost every song on The Warning is rife with science-fiction imagery, mostly tales of apocalyptic visions and war, and even a glimpse at a future totalitarian dystopia -- a lot like early Metallica and Megadeth, albeit with a sound that was not so raw and in-your-face. I'd been planning to get this cd at some point anyway, but "NM 156," the aforementioned totalitarian tale, was the song that finally prompted me to get a sense of urgency about doing that, about a month or so ago. I've heard it said that the song was inspired by George Orwell's 1984, and a listen to the song certainly gives one that idea:
"Erratic survey, freethinking not allowed/My hands shake, my pushbuttons silence the outside crowd/One world government has outlawed war among nations/Now social control requires population termination."The whole album is great -- it's probably my favorite of the classic Queensryche remasters up to Promised Land -- and "NM 156" is perhaps the biggest reason for that. Good, good stuff. Have a listen.
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