In the sports world, there’s a concept called “a rebuilding year”. It’s when your team has fallen apart: the star talent has been traded elsewhere, the new kids from the minors are still learning the ropes, the coaches have all been fired and replaced by third and fourth-tier managers, and the seasoned players are [...]

Queensryche’s latest, American Soldier, is out today! Check it out over at Amazon.com:

Who killed Mary? That’s the takeaway on probably the finest concept album ever created by a prog-metal band. Before Queensryche’s third album, the band already had an impressive collection of unique metal material, but Operation: Mindcrime not only progressed their sound and voice, but added the element of a timely and complex plot [...]

First off, the video for “If I Were King” is available now on Military.com. Check it out here. It’s not bad, although I could use a little more of the storyline video and a little less of Geoff Tate. It’s a little clearer this time that it’s a Somalia and Bosnia vet, [...]

I’m really starting to hate the term “widget”. It is one of those ambiguous bandwagons every tech company is jumping on, like Ajax or App Stores or whatever else. There are currently 863 different ways to do widgets, and none of them are compatible with each other.
But, here’s a good example of a [...]

Geoff Tate has written a column in Military.com called “Thank a Soldier”. Check it out here: http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,187049,00.html.
It’s basically an explanation of how their new album came about: he sat down with his dad, a Korea and Vietnam vet, and video-taped their conversation about his experiences in those two conflicts. He decided to write [...]

How do you follow up one of the best prog metal concept albums of all time? That was the monumental task in front of Queensryche when they finished touring in support of Operation:Mindcrime and started recording their fourth full release, Empire, in the spring of 1990. Would it be a sequel to the [...]

The lyrics to the new Queensryche album, American Soldier, have been posted on the web site anybodylistening.net. You can check them out here: http://www.anybodylistening.net/breakdownroom/index.php?topic=1008.msg13920#msg13920.
I’m not sure where the lyrics came from, but they’re interesting. I imagine to get the whole story, you have to hear all of the various samples and interview snippets [...]

My first thought when I heard Queensryche was releasing another compilation album was “christ, didn’t they just do this fifteen minutes ago?” Okay, it was more like four years earlier, but the Capitol Records 12-track Classic Masters contained no new material, and was essentially useless; the 2000 compilation Greatest Hits was barely passable, with [...]

Here’s a neat one - Queensryche and Dream Theater playing together in 2003, jamming on the ‘Floyd song “Comfortably Numb”. This is like the dude with the peanut butter jar and the dude with the chocolate bar running into each other in the pre-Reeses days. It’s pretty much note-for-note from the Pink Floyd [...]