Search - Queensryche :: Art of Live

Poor recording, bad singing, no harmonies, blech

W. Greenwood | USA | 08/02/2004

(2 out of 5 stars)

"I picked this one just to add to my complete collection of Queensryche recordings and it's very dissapointing.



First off, the vocals are poor, Geoff Tate is poofed right out in front, it sounds terrible. Sometimes it puffs the speakers it's soo close.



Second singing. Again Geoff sounds like he has his mouth stuffed with napkins like on Evolution. I think his voice is aging poorly. He hits the high notes occasionally, but take the song Roads To Madness, he just brings it all down an octave and doesn't hold. They're acoutic tracks, but still, at least do My Global Mind some justice.



No Harmonies, just take a listen to ANYBODY LISTENING, he's the only singer on it, put that with the puffy vocals, and congrats, you've turned a classic to boring as heck. Breaking the Silence again is bad. Mike Stone proved he could hit a good harmony on Losing Myself, so why doesn't he sing more? Bring DeGarmo back, at least he could sing good like on LiveCrime, where the harmonies were as soaring as ever.



All in all this album is just another addition to a collection, don't count on it as clasic. There are some decent highlights. Losing Myself, Desert Dance, Needle Lies, Best I Can."

No, I'm not missing anything. Queensryche sure as hell is.

Misha Bendavid | Austin, Texas United States | 07/13/2004

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Who are all these people drooling over this dreadful CD ? To quote QR themselves,
"Is There Anybody Listening ?" Geoff Tate not only misses many of his notes, he doesn't seem terribly interested in most of them. But the biggest travesty is the total
absence of any backing vocals. Whaaaaaaa....???? This band won me over with "Empire", and, since then, the clever vocal work has been one of their big selling points. That's all completely absent here and it's really depressing to hear. I'm a musician myself and I'm absolutely appalled that these guys would release this stillborn mess. Let me join the seemingly endless chorus ; CHRIS DEGARMO, WE NEED YOU ! I also have to quesion the lucidity of thse other reviewers. Are you people stoned ??"

Bleach

Tallas | Rochester, NY United States | 10/08/2004

(1 out of 5 stars)

"I didn't figure this live album could be even more mediocre than their 2001 double-CD "Live Evolution". And to say it's worse doesn't do it justice... it's MUCH worse.



How can that be? Well...



As others have pointed out, Geoff Tate may be losing vocal range, but more importantly, he doesn't even appear to be trying. The guitar work is thin, and usually strong rhythm combo Scott Rockenfield and Eddie Jackson are relegated to setting the boring pace of this CD. It's not that their playing is bad, it's that it's very subdued and lacking energy. The harmonies have been gone since Chris DeGarmo left around 1997.



Particularly awful is the "The Needle Lies". It's almost as if the song is played at half tempo, and if any song needs the pounding background, it's that. None of the songs off of "Tribe" do much for me either. The choruses are extremely flat and you won't find a single guitar solo in that suite.



"My Global Mind" and "Roads to Madness" in their acoustic form are interesting, but Geoff Tate obviously was replaced with an older, "mature", completely uninteresting ripoff of himself for these songs too. "Della Brown" is the strongest performance by far on the album, probably since the vocals on that song were fairly subdued by Queensryche's standards, and they didn't change it much for the live performance.



The impression I get after listening to all of the songs, then going back and listening to Livecrime, and yes, even the middling (awesome by comparison) Live Evolution is that these guys need a serious mid-life crisis, the aliens that abducted Geoff Tate need to work out a deal with Earth, and perhaps nothing short of divine intervention is going to get them their mojo back again.



I've been hoping since "Hear in the Now Frontier" that Queensryche would get their sound back, and it's been 7 years, 2 bad studio albums, 1 mediocre live album, and now this swill. I've about had enough."