Queensrÿche in 2015 is a very different band to the Queensrÿche of, say, 2010.
Now the split with vocalist Geoff Tate is well and truly in the past, the American prog metallers have released Condition Hüman, the second album to feature Todd La Torre at the mic. And if you liked Queensrÿche’s earlier, heavier material, you’ll love where they’re at now. Tate’s more artsy approach is gone, and in its place are pummelling riffs, majestic harmonies and virtuoso solos.
It’s true that for a lot of fans, Tate and former guitarist Chris DeGarmo defined the band’s songwriting, but with both those guys now out of the picture we get to hear what the remaining original members – guitarist Michael Wilton, drummer Scott Rockenfield and bass player Eddie Jackson – bring to the picture, along with La Torre and guitarist Parker Lundgren. It’s not like Wilton and co. have never written for the band before, of course, but now their writing is once again given the opportunity to thrive.
“With this recording we had a little more time to spend on the songs and we really brought more of the ingrained roots of our past, especially in my guitar playing,” says Wilton. “With the producer Chris ‘Zeuss’ Harris, we wanted to recapture that magic of how we used to record guitars and bring it into 2015. And I was more than willing, because that’s a great guitar sound, and that is me,” he laughs.
A big part of the Queensrÿche identity has always been the interplay between two contrasting guitar parts. It was crucial to the Wilton/DeGarmo chemistry, and it’s something that Wilton and Lundgren also pay special attention to. “I think it’s taking time with the arrangements and making them as interesting as possible and just really bringing the most that we can pack into a song, layer-wise, and just giving it the depth,” Wilton says. “And that layering, first and foremost, does that. It’s just a process we’ve always done over the years that has evolved from album to album.”
But as we all know, it all starts with a riff. “I’m sure you’ve heard that ten million times!” Wilton says. “But it all starts with a riff and the idea grows, and then you need to leave it alone and come back to it. It’s really important to have a break when you’re creating, because you need your mind to start hearing things. Once the notes start pouring into your mind as addendum to what you’ve been hearing, you can apply it like clay to a mould. And then it’s a matter of interpreting that on guitar.”
As for Wilton’s distinctive soloing style, even he finds it difficult to describe. “I can’t really pinpoint telling you what scale or mode I’m in – it’s more of an intuitive feel thing. I just hear the notes in my head and that’s how I interpret them. And I think as a technician I tend to balance the minor scales with diminished and augmented situations; a lot of harmonic minor, melodic minor and natural minor. And when you’re a guitar player it gets kind of mundane staying in those minor scales, so you throw in something major every now and then. It opens up the whole experience.”
Queensrÿche have never shied away from innovative approaches to recording. Their 1994 album Promised Land was one of the first to take advantage of that era’s new DIY-based digital recording technologies, with the band members working at home on ADAT recorders as well as together in a number of studios. For Condition Hüman, they streamlined the process (and also made it possible to lay down their heaviest guitar sound ever) by re-amping.
“When vocals were being done in my studio, I’d be in another room with the session on my laptop, recording into there, and then we’d go into the main studio, import it and re-amplify it through the Marshall,” explains Wilton. “I’d never done that before, and I was amazed that you can do that. You can re-amp wherever you are – on hotels, on the bus, and as long as the performance is solid you can always go back and re-amp through your main rig.”
Queensrÿche’sCondition Hüman is out now through Century.
